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She wanted him to know. It was real. For her, it had always been real.
He paused and kissed her, his lips so searing she felt it in her bones, and she nuzzled her face against his, but it hurt. She’d known it might hurt if not done slowly, but she was glad it did. Certain things were meant to hurt. She’d seduced Kaine when it was abundantly clear that this was a line he had no desire to cross. She had pushed and persisted and done it anyway, because she was desperate. That should hurt.
You outmanoeuvred me. Or maybe I’m just too tired and grieving to keep pushing you away. You won.” He met her eyes for a moment, his expression bitter and derisive. “Well done.”
For the first time, Kaine Ferron was fully human to her. She’d slipped through his walls and peeled away the defensive layers of malice and cruelty, and found that there he carried a broken heart.
“I envied your naïveté, how you credited me with goodness and failed to realise that it was a setup from the very beginning. When you begged for a chance to heal me, I gave in. When you touched me, I didn’t push you away. I thought, Where’s the harm? It all ends soon enough, and life has been cold for such a long time.”
“After you nearly bled to death here, I thought, at least I can keep her alive. She deserves to have someone who cares enough to try to keep her alive.
right now all I feel is a new set of manacles.”
Crying
“She’s dead,” he said. “You are not. My loyalty was to those least responsible for her suffering, but if the Eternal Flame has decided that you are an affordable casualty, I will not be noble or understanding. I can exact dual revenge. I will make them pay if they get you killed.”
“You are not expendable. You don’t get to push everyone away so that they’ll feel comfortable using you and letting you die.”
“You are not replaceable,” he said, his hands trembling against her shoulders. “You are not required to make your death convenient. You are allowed to be important to people. The reason I’m here—the reason I’m doing any of this—is to keep you alive. To keep you safe. That was the deal.” He searched her face. “They didn’t tell you.”
“I don’t want to always be alone,” she said. It was easier to be honest in the dark. “I want to love someone without feeling like if they know, it’ll end up hurting them. People who love me always die. No matter what I do, it’s never enough to save them. I have to love everyone from a distance, and I’m so lonely.”
“If I care about you—I won’t be able to use you. And you’re the only hope I have of keeping everyone else alive.”
“I can take it.
It hurts us
She didn’t know if what she was doing was holding on or letting go.
“This—is the way I wanted it to be,” she admitted. “With you. I wanted it to be like this with you.”
He was unfathomably gentle. His touch light, and yet it made her feel as though a flame were kindled inside her, a desire that made her ache.
When he kissed her, it felt like the beginning of something that could be eternal.
As she lay panting, trying to catch her breath, his speed increased. Gripping her closer, tighter, his expression going tense. When he came, his mask slipped. He met her eyes for a moment before he buried his face against her shoulder, and she saw all the heartbreak in him.
He was fire, and she was already consumed.
“You’re mine. You swore yourself to me. Now and after the war. I’m going to take care of you. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you. You don’t have to be lonely. Because you’re mine.”
“You keep people alive. You touch them and your instinct is to save them, no matter who they are or what they’ve done to you. That is not a trait we share. It’s far more difficult than calculating all the ways to kill someone. And it costs you more.”
“Don’t worry. I’m always going to come back to you.”
Of course the chimaeras were savage. How could anything endure so much hurt and not learn only to bite?
Slavery was illegal on the Northern continent, so Hevgoss had reinvented it.
Oh so theyre american lol
“You’re mine. You’re mine.” He’d repeat the words over and over. “Say it. Say you’re mine.”
“I promise, Kaine. I’m always going to be yours.”
face. “You’re mine. I’ll always come for you.” He always did.
“Just live, Helena.”
He looked at her, and she could see the whole war in his eyes, the toll that came from struggling with no end in sight, driven by a terror of what might happen if he ever stopped.
“You are so much more than what the war has done to you.”
The visual evidence of the injury would never go away. In a moment of intimacy it would be all there was to see. Staring at it in the cold light of day, she couldn’t help but think that someday Kaine might not want someone who had the war so overtly carved into them. Surely he’d want to be able to forget sometimes.
STOP
“You are. It doesn’t matter what happens to you, you will still be mine.”
I love you. She told him in the way she held him close; in the way her mouth met his; in how her hands trailed across his skin, mapping him, memorising every detail of what it was to be with him, his scars under her fingers. I love you. I love you.
“I think I forgot to breathe after you left.”
“You know I would if I could. I’d run with you and never look back.”
“Don’t die, Kaine. You can’t leave me behind.”
“Mine. You’re mine,” he said as he kissed her. “Always.”
If Morrough interrogated her personally, he’d find Kaine in her thoughts and memories. No amount of evasion could hide him; he was the fabric of her thoughts. Her every action tied to him.
Kill me
Her life was a graveyard.
I’d do it all again, every second, to save you.”
“You didn’t save me,” he said when he was finally capable of speech. “You just put us in hell for two years.”
“Every time you asked, I promised I was yours. Always. There aren’t any exemptions or expiration dates on always.”
He kissed her like he was starving. As though he were trying to pour himself into her or consume her. He’s mine. He is all mine, was all she could think.
“He looks like your wife, doesn’t he? It’s the eyes and mouth; they’re so much like hers. He’s all you have left of her now. But every time he sees you, he hates you with your wife’s eyes.”
“You need a willing soul for that, and you’re not going to find one, because the only person who’d die for me is you.”
After fierce debate, vivimancy was added as a field of alchemical study at the Institute. Lila had insisted on it. Healers had been vital to the Eternal Flame during the war. The potential of the resonance was being villainised and wasted by superstitious paranoia; it should not be an ability exclusive to those willing to abuse it. Paladia’s discriminatory treatment of vivimancers had played a role in how easily the Undying had recruited them. Paladia had to evolve.
If he’s a monster, then I’m his creator.”
She was a non-active member of the Order of the Eternal Flame and did not fight.
