26. Silver
26
S ILVER
|1 DAY UNTIL THE ASSURANCE|
In my dreams, my mind rakes me through the worst parts of the day, over and over. The way Mance’s expression crumpled when she realized I’d betrayed her, how she turned to me and I had nothing at all to say. The explosion, and how it felt to tear through the wreckage of my home looking for my friends, not knowing whether they were dead or alive. Inky blackness hovering through the air in front of Mance’s curious face, and the fear that I wouldn’t get to her in time.
I am thrown through these scenes so often that I can’t remember how they turned out, can’t remember whether I managed to explain, whether I ever found my friends, whether I protected Mance from the blast.
When I bolt awake, it’s in a bed with scratchy sheets, in a room that smells like medicine and lavender, and even though everything is calm and still around me, my heart is pounding as the claws of the nightmares refuse to unclench from my mind.
Where am I?
What happened?
I’m about to fling myself from the bed and burst out of the room demanding answers.
But then I see Mance.
She’s asleep in a chair next to me, slumped onto the side of the bed. Her face is slack and peaceful, no sign of injury or even pain. Her dark hair is splayed on the white sheets and one hand is clutching the edge of the blanket.
The other hand is clutching mine.
My heart clenches painfully at the sight, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so beautiful, so immediately soothing. I gasp out a chuckle at my own panic and force my mind to slow down enough to remember the rest of what happened. I did explain. I did find my friends. I did save Mance.
I don’t know yet whether she forgives me, though.
I examine our entwined fingers like they might hold the answer, wondering if she took my hand on purpose or merely reached for it in her sleep. Heck, maybe I reached for her.
As the tension eases from my shoulders, I stroke my thumb over her knuckles, drinking in the sight of her unharmed. The sound of her even breaths. The soft scent of honeysuckle soap in her hair. It’s all perfect.
If I could, I would linger in this moment forever.
Instead, I force myself to disentangle and pull back.
Because if this isn’t what she wants, if she yanks her hand away in disgust when she realizes what it’s doing, that would break me.
I blow out a breath.
Then I tuck a strand of hair behind the shell of her ear and whisper her name.
She blinks awake, looking at me blearily, and I dig my nails into my leg as I wait for her to smile or frown.
She does neither. She just sits up, slowly. Her gaze drags across my face and I tense at the feel of it, like she’s brushing fingertips across my skin.
Yet her eyes never quite meet mine.
“What did you dream?” she asks.
The question throws me. I put my elbows on my knees, stalling, and the sheets slide down my bare chest.
Weirdly, there aren’t any black marks. I know the magic hit me, am sure I remember its cold burn, and yet it isn’t there.
“We gave you healing magic,” Mance explains, reading the confusion on my face. “But it’s known to give nightmares. True ones. What did you see?”
I’d rather talk about why she’s here, why she waited at my bedside long enough to fall asleep, and the still-pressing matter of who specifically reached for whom and when. But I sigh, supposing that I owe her an answer.
“Just… today,” I tell her. “Over and over again. Betrayal on your face, my house exploding, digging through debris and not being able to find…” My mind catches up to my words, and all of a sudden it occurs to me where I am and how much time has passed. There are windows on the far wall, and they show nothing but darkness outside. It must be the middle of the night. “Vie and Rooftop!” I cry. “We have to go get them! They—”
“Are in the next room,” Mance assures me. “About an hour after you got knocked out, Vie showed up at the front gate hauling Rooftop and screaming something about how if I’m still alive and I’m really as great as Silver thinks I am, I’ll treat them both immediately.”
Fond pride hits me like a hot brick to the chest. “And you did,” I say confidently.
She makes an affirmative noise and then looks down, playing with the hem of the sheets as something vulnerable leaks into her expression. It’s the same broken face she made earlier, like an echo of my nightmare playing out in front of me.
It kills me to see it.
“Mance, I—”
“ Don’t tell me you’re sorry.”
I reel back, her words like a slap.
So that’s it, then.
She doesn’t forgive me.
My throat constricts and my body suddenly feels ten times heavier. I close my eyes and try to breathe, try to convince myself that I’m okay with her decision. I never deserved her forgiveness in the first place, so I can’t blame her for withholding it. But I still feel the cut somewhere deep within me.
I must have been the one who reached out after all.
“Fine,” I hiss. “Although I am. What do you want me to tell you instead?”
She’s silent so long that I open my eyes again, unable to stop looking at her, even when the looking hurts.
Her face is pale, her shoulders hunched. I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from taking her into my arms and smoothing away the creases on her brow.
Because that’s not my place anymore.
“Just tell me,” she says finally, “how much… um. What I want to know is… when we…” She trails off, her hands wringing the edge of the linen again, making shadows in its creases. “Did you lie about… everything?” she asks.
“Not even most things,” I tell her, voice low but forceful.
She purses her lips. “What about last night?” she asks.
The question tears through me. It’s cruel to make me linger in those memories if they’re the last ones I’ll have with her, but I suppose I deserve that, too. I’ll drag myself through it if that’s what she needs me to do.
I give an unsteady laugh. Without meaning to, my gaze latches on to the curve of her lips. “Are you asking if I wanted to kiss you?” My voice sounds strained even to me.
Her cheeks flood with heat, but she nods.
And the fact that she doesn’t know already is so comical that it almost makes me angry.
“When?” I grit out. “Do you mean when we were on the boat and you leaned in… this close…?” My body moves on its own, bending toward her until we’re only inches apart, as though if I could only reenact the moment well enough, we would fall back into it.
I brace for her to pull away.
But she doesn’t.
Instead, her eyes widen and finally meet mine.
And something between us shifts.
My chest tightens in disbelief, and I study her obsessively, hungrily.
She studies me back, her eyes just as searching.
Slower now, testing her response as well as my own restraint, I reach up a hand to frame her face, my voice softer. “Or do you mean when you were wrapped around me in the blankets?” I ask, my touch trailing down her jawline to trace her lips, just like I did then. Her breath hitches and I feel it flutter across my fingertips.
I clench my teeth, scared to push her too far. “Actually, it doesn’t matter. The answer is yes. You could pick any moment out of last night, and my answer would be yes. I definitely wanted to kiss you. And I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.”
I thought I knew what wanting was. After all, I’ve spent most of my life yearning and desperate, fighting in the dirt.
But I’ve never wanted anything as viscerally as this before. I’ve never felt it as a physical sensation in my body, cutting through my stomach and curling my toes.
With a colossal effort, I wrench myself away from her, intending to fall back onto the pillows with a groan.
Until she grabs my chin, holding me in place.
“Me too,” she says breathlessly.
I still beneath her touch, deathly afraid that I’m misunderstanding her, even as a thrill of anguished hope burns through me.
I tamp it down, determined. Because she can’t really mean—
She reaches back to twine her fingers around the hand cupping her face, and I’m certain she’s going to remove it.
But then she guides it lower, running our tangled fingers down her skin until we reach the hollow of her throat.
Where her heart is beating as fast as mine is.
My eyes flicker up, shocked.
And hers are blazing. Far beyond a flicker of candlelight, it’s like there’s an inferno in her midnight eyes, making them bluer and brighter than ever before.
Bright enough to incinerate the last of my resistance.
My lips crash into hers and it’s like dawn breaking over me. The sunshine of her smile—which I can now feel the curves and edges of up close—lights up my every nerve ending until my whole body feels alive. I think I groan, but I don’t have time to be embarrassed because she’s burying her hands in my hair, tilting the corners of my jaw upward and kissing me back like she really has wanted this just as badly as I have.
I drag her into the sheets and we become a tangle of blankets and limbs, searching hands and searing mouths. She takes hold of my shoulders, pulling me into her, and I take hold of her hips, marveling at how good she feels against me.
There are no secrets left between us anymore. There isn’t anything left between us, not even space. Her chest is flush against mine, so close that I can feel our pulses pounding together, a frenzied rhythm that reassures me with every beat that we’re finally, finally on the same page.
When we pull back, our breaths are ragged.
“All right,” she says. “I forgive you.”
The kiss had been a bit of a giveaway, but relief still makes me lightheaded. Idly, I smooth down the wild tangle of her hair. “Are you sure? I feel like we could run over some of the finer points of my apology again.”
She chuckles, her eyes lingering on my mouth in a way that makes me feel like I might still be on fire.
“Later,” she says. “I promise. But right this minute, I need to go. I wanted to be here when you woke up, but since you have, well… Now that I’m the Prime, there are a few things I need to take care of.”
She sashays out of the room, softly humming under her breath, and I’m so dizzy with elation that it’s not until she’s halfway down the hall that I fully process what she’s said.
“Wait, hold on!” I call after her. “Now that you’re the what ?”