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“Sylvia.” A chill crept along my spine.
Your mother loved you, I almost said. She filled you with stories.
“There is plenty to be found, if one knows where to look.”
“I choose her,” Arin said. Final.
Arin smiled, pulling his scar tight. “Finally.”
“Well?” he said. “Come and see.”
You entered a world where magic is corrosive and Jasadis are inherently evil. I entered one where turning a shoe into a dove made my mother laugh. Have you considered, in that infinite mind of yours, that the truly brilliant people are the ones who understand the realities we build were already built for us?”
“You are not what I was expecting,”
Arin’s gaze lingered on my neck for longer than normal. When he reached forward, I cringed, tightening my grip on the dagger. I half expected him to close his hands around my throat. Instead, what he did was far more baffling. He folded back my collar.
“You said you revolt me. You do, but not for the reasons you think.”
“Lovers’ spat?”
Later, I would recall how Arin blanched. How those two words seemed to deal him a debilitating blow.
But he was touching me now and—nothing. No panic.
“Are you aware you have five freckles under your jaw?”
Arin’s hands knit together over his stomach as he sat back. “I am open to any suggestions on how I can improve my clumsy affections—” I hurled a folded quilt at him, boiling with embarrassment.
“After the Hound attacked me, you didn’t run.
“You did well, Sylvia.”
“Nizahl’s colors suit you.”
“He isn’t… broken. He would love the same as any man.”
“Arin is consumed by what he loves. If asked, he would get on his knees and let it kill him. He withholds his heart out of self-preservation.”
His gloved hand squeezed mine, once,
At the sight of me, Arin went ashen and rounded on the crowd. “Get a medic!”
“Stay with me, Sylvia.
“He made a calculation in that moment between the time it would take to capture the girl and the time you had left. He made his choice.”
“It wasn’t a choice based on practicality,”
A gloved hand slid over mine. I startled, rushing to withdraw my arms. Arin’s grip tightened. “Don’t.”
But I wanted you to know, because… the way he looks at you sometimes. Like you are a cliff with a fatal fall, and each day you move him closer to its edge.”
breathed Arin in, my head slumping over the crook of his arm
He sounded furious. “Those crops do real damage. You might have died.”
“To be disappointed.”
Birds had practiced their sweet songs for generations, but even their music did not compare to the sound of Arin’s laugh.
“I am not a butcher.” I wept into Arin’s throat. “I am not an axe to be swung in any direction I am pointed. He deserved better than this. He deserved better than me.”
Arin looked at me until it started to hurt. A covered thumb slid across my cheekbone. “What appeal can reason have in the face of your tears?”
I am where I want to be.”
“I am glad to hear you speak my name outside of imminent danger,” Arin said softly, and the battle was lost.
After a lifetime of running, he was my homecoming.
“Don’t ask me to abide your death at my hands.”
Arin exhaled, warm against my neck, and held me fast.
That with him, every aversion was a craving.
That even though one day I would kneel before Jasad’s judges in the afterlife to account for it, I would not renounce a single moment of loving the Nizahl Heir.
“Do you have the faintest clue how you frustrate me?”
“How you fascinate me?”
“Constantly.”
He had barely touched me, and already I felt wholly charred.
“You are not what I was expecting,” he whispered. “You’ve said that to me before,” I said, embarrassingly breathless.
Love was Arin cradling my face in a burning room and telling me to run.
