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“He is saying that he respects you above himself and, most importantly, above his honor.”
He’s ensuring I get out . . . No matter what.
Beg him to live.
Kaan reaches me, teeth bared, his ravaged chest leaking blood. He lumps Hock’s head on the ground before my low dais, and I feel that same weight thump within me, a choked sound wriggling past my trembling lips.
“Moonbeam.” “Hmm . . .” “Please don’t scare me like that again.”
My salvation. And the very reason you’re probably going to gut me with your pocket blade before I even make it into the Stronghold.
She’s very lucky this didn’t kill her.” I would’ve split the world if it did. Then split my fucking self.
“Who in the Creators-damn fuck is that, and why does she look like Elluin Neván?
I scrub my beard as Agni paints a bonding agent over the snowy flesh I’ve kissed more times than I can count.
her eyes flared with the promise of a death I’d rather have at her hand than anyone else’s.
Perhaps the diary will shed some light on the black hole she punched through my heart when she left without a word to me and a single pathetic note to the male she supposedly loved.
In, say . . . I don’t know, a giant blood-soaked coliseum with a stake in the middle that’s really uncomfortable to be tied to?”
“Rayne is power,”
He dumped me in a tub full of warm, bubbly water, fully clothed,
“I trust my folk, and I’m eighty percent certain you won’t kill me now that I’ve saved your life twice.”
Around him . . . sometimes words just feel inadequate.
It makes damn fucking sure I know loneliness is the only acquaintance I’ll ever have,
And though that would’ve been a balm to my burning rage just a few short slumbers ago, the thought now plows its fist through my chest and rips, rips, rips at all my important bits.
A hard warmth presses against me from behind, shielding me from the rain. Pulling my hands from my ears and wrapping them around my chest, encasing me in a snug, sturdy embrace. I know it’s Kaan even before he speaks,
A song I’m achingly familiar with.
threading me together one familiar note at a time until I can draw enough steady breaths to sing along with the tune. Words I’ve only ever heard murmured through the hollow of my mind—distant echoes I’ve never been able to grasp the dusky origin of.
Like I’ve been here before.
“But just so you know, I coaxed your guard into swapping an empty crockery dish for his dagger that’s currently strapped to my upper thigh, and I’m not afraid to use it.”
I certainly don’t tell him the growing cold feels a lot like . . . Home.
I thought Kaan was a tyrant. A heartless monster. But he has such a big, warm heart I’m surprised it fits in his chest.
“You’re familiar with it,” Kaan says, his baritone wrestling the silence like a rockslide. Battering me. “I—”
“I think you know this moon better than anyone else.”
“Because I knew a female who died. Tragically. Whose lifeless body was sailed into the sky by the adoring beast at your back with my torn-out heart in her fucking fist,”
Lie to the world, but please don’t lie to me.”
“Chase death, Elluin Raeve.”
“Chase death, Moonbeam. And I pray your bloodlust brings you the same sense of peace I feel just knowing you exist.”
“She’s still in there,” I whisper past the swelling pip in my throat. Elluin. Kaan nods—just once. “Somewhere.”
“Dear brother, are you worried about me?” “Since the dae Pah shoved you in my arms—squirming, bloody, and screaming.”
“What do you want, Elluin?” “You.” I turn my head, open my eyes. Get lost in Kaan’s ember gaze as a smile fills my cheeks. “Forever.”
This place isn’t the relic of somebody else’s love . . . It’s ours.
I didn’t realize Kaan had stopped playing until he scooped me up, tucked me against his chest, and held me so tight I could barely breathe, his strong body absorbing every one of my sobs.
Like one of my ribs had been snapped free,
It was barely a touch, but it ripped a hole in my perception of the world and bared the guts of a whole new version of existence . . . Bigger. Brighter. Happier.
But how could something so wrong feel so fucking right?
As the cycles flip by, I’ve come to the slow, uncomfortable realization that Kaan fell in love with a distant, bygone version of me that was probably softer. Kinder.
“The last Great Flurrt we spent together was the last time I saw her alive.”
Either way, there’s no one else I’d willingly serve my heart on a platter to—over and over and over again—like a hopeless, lovesick stray begging for a treat.
“If you want me”—he presses his mouth to my ear, nipping gently—“I’m fucking yours.”
He’s fire and brimstone. I’m shattered ice. Our collision is steam and destruction, destined to dissipate, but I’ll gladly burn beneath him until the world comes crumbling down.
You don’t simply scratch an itch with Kaan Vaegor, then throw him away and move on to another. You peel back your skin and open your ribs to the male. You tuck him somewhere deep and safe, fight others off with weapons forged from secrets sharp enough to slice, then perish with those secrets clutched close to your chest.
“I don’t understand how you still look at me like you want me.”
“Raeve, you could flay me down the middle and I’d still fucking love you.”
All I want from this slumber is to allow myself to love. Or at the very least try
The only beam of light I’ll ever need or want in this world, my love for her sitting like a moon in my chest.
