Chapter 17 Mav
MAV
The last note of a nameless tune slipped from my lips, the sound trailing off into the dark.
My fingers combed absently through Quinn’s hair, long after her breathing had settled into the steady rhythm of sleep.
Her features softened in a way I rarely saw when she was awake.
As if, only for tonight, the tether, the countdown, and the weight of memory had relented.
I watched her.
Her dark lashes cast delicate shadows against her cheekbones. The swell of her lips parted to let sleep through. One hand curled beneath her chin; the other rested inches from mine, close enough to reach but not quite touching.
And in that moment—
I knew.
I was never letting her go.
The realization struck like a blade to the ribs—for the second time today. Though this one spilled emotion rather than blood.
I’d never felt like this before.
Not with anyone.
Not like this.
There was a girl once, Cira. A noble’s daughter with clever eyes and ambitions taller than any tower.
We’d courted for a while, back when I still wore heraldry and a title.
But when I fell, so did her interest. She’d ended it with a letter and a cold smile, saying she couldn’t build a future on broken foundations.
I wholeheartedly agreed with her. Then I spent the next six months in a drunken stupor and pretending I hadn’t imagined what our children might’ve looked like.
But I hadn’t felt empty when Cira left. I’d been expecting it to end.
What I felt now—watching Quinn sleep, knowing I only had eight more nights like this—filled me with a terror second only to her being grabbed by that bandit.
I brushed a stray lock of hair back from her forehead, careful not to wake her.
“Sleep well,” I whispered. “I’ll still be here in the morning.”
I didn’t know whether it was a vow or misplaced hope. Would the world let me keep such a promise?
Easing myself up from the bedroll, I was careful not to grunt too loudly—Quinn needed rest, not me rousing her with my dramatics. Every inch of my body ached as if I’d been trampled by a particularly vindictive herd of goats, but I was upright, and that counted for something.
Branrir sat on a large log a few paces away, a battered map unrolled in front of him, a stick in one hand tracing pathways and ridges. A cheeky grin stretched across his face when I approached.
I narrowed my eyes. “What’s that look supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” he said, far too quickly. “Absolutely nothing at all.”
I huffed and dropped onto a nearby stone, stretching my legs slowly so my ribs didn’t protest too much. “Come on, Branrir. I may not be a brilliant Hindsight, but I know when someone’s holding back.”
He steepled his fingers in mock innocence. “What? I’m simply enjoying a quiet evening under the stars. Not thinking anything at all about how our resident brooding knight seems to have melted into a sentimental puddle over one very particular lady.”
“If you have something to say, go ahead and say it.”
He glanced across the fire toward Quinn, peaceful and curled in sleep. “It’s not my business,” he said.
I snorted. “That’s never stopped you before.”
“Guilty as charged,” he said with a conspiratorial grin. “But I think you and Quinn might really have something.”
The words landed harder than I expected.
My muscles tensed, and I regretted the sharp inhale that tugged against the bandage around my ribs.
A spark of hope flared at his words before I smothered it with realism.
She was bound by a tether she didn’t choose.
I was the unfortunate bastard holding the rope.
We’d known each other for—what? Six days?
“She’s essentially the hostage of a magical curse, and I’m the guy tied to her by proximity and bad luck. That’s not romantic.”
“You know,” he mused, “love isn’t always about time. Or logic. When it’s the right person, sometimes time’s the least important part of the equation.”
I rolled my eyes. “Did you read that in The Chronicles of Lunacy for Love-Sick Weirdos?”
He pressed his lips together. “No,” he said. “I learned it when I fell for Bradford in one conversation.”
That shut me up.
He didn’t speak again for a moment, tracing a fingertip across one of the map’s faded borders.
“My late partner,” he said finally, quiet and even.
“He was a brilliant Hindsight. Stubborn. Argued with me the first time we met about the politics of post-war philosophy and called my favorite historian a verbose hack.” Nostalgia washed over his face.
“I was smitten.” Sadness crept around the edges of his smile.
“We danced around it for two years. I insisted it was too soon, that it was all happening too fast.”
Branrir swiped a tear from his cheek. “By the time I finally admitted how I felt, we were already running out of time. He got sick. Hedge couldn’t touch it.
Neither could the Hands’ healing magic. We had ten wonderful years.
” He took a shuddering breath. “We could’ve had twelve if I hadn’t been so damn afraid of what it meant to feel something too soon. ”
His experiences struck a deep chord within me, leaving me speechless.
How many times had I treated love like a someday?
Someday, when I was settled.
Someday, when I was worthy.
When I had a house. When I had a future to offer.
But someday had never come, and now Quinn was here with only days to spare.
Branrir rose slowly, brushing off his hands. “She’s rare,” he said, glancing once more toward the sleeping shape across the fire. “And your window to find out if it could be real? It’s small. Don’t waste it.”
Forcing a swallow down my throat, I raked a hand through my hair. “I don’t suppose there’s a book on how to sort through feelings for a cursed woman you’ve known for less than a week?”
A chuckle rolled from him. “Chapter one: Accept that you’re doomed,” he said without lifting his head. “Chapter two: Try not to be stupid about it.”
Time had never been on love’s side.
And I didn’t know if I was brave enough to reach for something I knew I might lose.
But I was starting to think that not reaching might hurt worse.
“Branrir,” I began, catching him as he stood. “It’s the tether, right? All the…feelings?”
His face twisted in thought. “Mav, tethers can share emotions between bound souls, but the bond doesn’t create emotions.” A warm smile stretched his face. “If you have feelings for Quinn, the tether has nothing to do with it.”
He disappeared toward his bedroll, and I sat there a moment longer. Then I stood—slow, aching—and crossed back to Quinn. I sank onto my bedroll and lay facing her, a breath apart. I counted her freckles. Traced each lash in my mind, a line of poetry.
Saints.
Was it possible to fall for someone in less than a week?
The answer stared me in the face.
Of course it was.
I already had.
She wasn’t like any of the women I’d known before.
They liked my smile but not the baggage behind it.
They flirted with the idea of me, but bailed when reality showed up bruised, broke, and out of work.
Those flings had been casual, forgettable as breath.
We laughed, we drank, we danced, we made love, but no one got close. I’d made sure of it.
But Quinn?
Every time I looked at her, the world made more and somehow less sense. The spell bound us temporarily. She wasn’t mine by any stretch of the imagination, but I wanted her to be.
I wanted her to choose that.
To choose me.
A muscle jumped in my jaw.
You’re a fool, Bassiano.
For all the ways I wanted her—for all the ways I felt her winding herself around the inside of my chest—I couldn’t shake the needling voice in the back of my head.
The spell only broke if she returned the feelings. Which meant…if she didn’t? Then I was the idiot who’d fallen for a woman who might rather sleep for another hundred years than be with me.
I stared at the curve of her shoulder. The faint rise and fall of her breath.
What if she woke up every century hoping for someone better?
And this time, she got me instead. The thought hit deep, splintering inside me.
I’d seen rejection. Had it handed to me in taverns, training grounds, and courtrooms. I’d heard the polite laughter, the gentle letdowns.
No future. No potential. Too much baggage.
No title or status to speak of. But this?
If she woke up, looked at me, and still chose the dark?
I wouldn’t know the first step in recovering from that kind of rejection.
Because for the first time in my life, I wanted more than to be chosen.
I wanted to be enough. Enough to make her stay awake.
To make her want the life she kept losing.
I wanted to be the reason she stopped waiting for the dark to take her back.
My gaze dropped to the bandage wrapped tight around my ribs, fingers brushing the edge where Thistle had tied it. The skin beneath throbbed in rhythm with my heartbeat. I’d nearly died today. And all I could think was I’d take a hundred wounds if it meant I could keep falling asleep next to her.
Saints, what is wrong with me?
I let out a slow breath, closed my eyes, and let her face rise behind my eyelids like dawn.
The tether between us stirred in my chest, a soft, pulsing awareness of her presence. And for the first time since we’d been bound together, I didn’t want to run. I wanted to reach for her. To press my forehead against hers and whisper every word I didn’t know how to say.
The clock was ticking.
I was already losing her.
It had only been a few days.
Yet my pathetic heart was already beating to the rhythm of forever.