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He had been a hero once. Now, he was cursed with the half-life of a shadow wraith.
Not only was he an entitled, fragile man-child, but he was a fucking idiot as well.
‘What should I call you, Wildfire?’ The word slipped from his lips before he’d even thought it, for that was what the woman was – a living flame, both in her violent actions and the streaks of red through her burnt-umber hair.
‘She was trying to kill you.’ ‘Some of the best sex starts that way, my young apprentice.’
‘I hope she sticks a knife in your back.’ ‘With a face like that, I might just let her.’
Smiling, he offered it to her – the heart of a wraith. ‘I considered flowers, but I thought you’d like this more…’
‘If you need words of comfort, perhaps remember this: there are all kinds of darkness in this world. Some good, some bad, and some with no agenda at all. It’s what that darkness means to you and what you do with it yourself that matters most.’
He met her gaze. ‘It’s about a maiden who falls in love with a beast.’ Her throat bobbed as she carefully thumbed its pages. ‘Wishful thinking?’ Talemir didn’t move. ‘You tell me.’ ‘I’m no maiden,’ she said quietly. ‘But I’ll wager there have been plenty who have fallen in love with you.’ ‘I’m not concerned with others.’
‘Sometimes, to love someone, we have to let them go… In order to go where we need to, we must turn away from one path, onto another…’
‘Touch her again,’ he said, leaning in, crushing Coltan to the wall behind him, ensuring the punishing grip mirrored his words. ‘And you die.’
‘Since the moment I met you, I have felt like I was soaring. With you there is no ground beneath my boots, no rail to hold on to, and for a time there, I fought it with all my might… But no more. I’ve let go. And Wildfire, it’s more than I could have ever imagined. With you, I didn’t fall in love. I rose amid it, stronger than ever before.’ Talemir took a trembling breath, baring his soul like he never had. ‘I love you against all reason.’ Drue stared at him, her fingers loose in his. ‘If it’s not enough,’ he managed, bowing to unsheathe the dagger in his boot and, on one knee, pressing it
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Love didn’t happen once, she realised. It happened every day, in little moments, in the quiet gaps between grand words, in the lingering touches, in the hope it promised in the dark. Love was something that breathed and expanded, that was made and remade, again and again, reforged only to become stronger.
‘The darkness took a lot from me…’ Drue kissed him soundly, desire already reawakening within. ‘But it also gave me you.’
