Chapter 30 #3
“I’m not arguing about this.” I stepped closer, using every inch of authority I possessed.
“You’re injured. You’re exhausted. And you’re going to rest whether you like it or not.
So either you walk your stubborn ass over to that bed, or I will physically put you there myself.
And given the state you’re in, I don’t think you’ll enjoy the experience. ”
For a moment, I thought he might actually fight me on it. His silver eyes tracked mine with that calculating intensity, weighing options, assessing outcomes.
Then slowly—finally—he stood.
I watched him move toward the bed. He sank onto the edge of the mattress with more grace than someone in his condition had any right to possess, swinging his legs up and settling back against the pillows.
“Happy?” he asked, and despite everything, there was amusement in the word.
“Ecstatic.” I crossed to the bookshelf near the window, scanning the spines until I found something that looked halfway interesting. Some treatise on territorial magic. Perfect. Boring enough to keep me occupied without actually engaging my brain.
I grabbed the book and turned back toward the bed. Varyth was watching me with that unreadable expression, probably expecting me to drag a chair over or leave entirely.
Instead, I kicked off my boots and climbed onto the other side of the bed, settling against the headboard with the book in my lap.
“What are you doing?”
I didn’t look up. “Reading.”
“Isara.”
“Varyth.”
“You don’t need to stay.”
“Didn’t say I did.” I turned a page. “But I’m staying anyway.”
The mattress shifted slightly as he turned his head toward me. I could feel the weight of his stare, could practically hear him thinking, calculating, trying to figure out how to dismiss me without sounding like a complete ass.
“Why?” The question was softer than I expected. Less command, more genuine confusion.
I finally looked at him.
“Because I’m still pissed at you, but if you bleed out before I can properly shove you for being a manipulative bastard, it will absolutely ruin the effect.” I held up the blue bottle. “Now drink this before I change my mind about the whole ‘dragging a healer up here’ thing.”
He took the bottle from my hand, our fingers brushing in the exchange. The contact sent heat spiralling through me, and judging by the way his breath hitched, he felt it too.
Varyth uncorked the bottle and downed the contents in one smooth motion, his throat working on the swallow. When he finished, he set the empty bottle on the bedside table and settled back against the pillows.
“I should’ve left you in the Veil,” he muttered, but there was no heat in it. Just exhaustion and fondness.
“Yeah, well.” I shifted slightly, getting comfortable against the headboard. “Too late now. You’re stuck with me.”
“Apparently.” His eyes were already starting to drift closed, the pain tonic working its way through his system. “Stubborn female.”
“Hypocritical male.”
A low, contented sound rumbled from Varyth’s chest.
I glanced over. His eyes were glazed, pupils blown wide enough to swallow the silver of his irises. The tension that usually held him rigid as a blade was melting away, his body sinking deeper into the pillows like gravity had just remembered he existed.
“That was fast,” I muttered, returning my attention to the book. Except the words wouldn’t cooperate, kept blurring into meaningless shapes because I was hyperaware of every breath Varyth took beside me.
“Mmm.” The sound was liquid, drowsy. “S’nice.”
I turned another page I hadn’t read. “What’s nice?”
“Everything.” His head lolled toward me, and when I made the mistake of looking at him, his expression was so open it felt wrong. Like watching someone naked who didn’t realise they’d forgotten their clothes. “You’re nice.”
My eyebrows climbed. “I literally just called you an idiot.”
“Still nice.”
His hand lifted—slow, uncoordinated—and his fingers found a strand of my hair that had fallen forward. He wound it around one finger with the kind of focus usually reserved for my black fire.
“Soft.” His voice carried that particular quality of someone whose brain-to-mouth filter had just taken a holiday.
Heat crawled up my neck. “Varyth—”
“Your hair.” He tugged gently. “S’like fire. Warm. Didn’t know you could be warm.”
“You’re stoned out of your mind.”
“Little bit.” He grinned—an actual, unguarded grin that did catastrophic things to my composure. “But m’not wrong. You’re—” He gestured vaguely at all of me. “You’re very—” Another wave of his hand. “Y’know.”
“Enlightening.”
“Mhmm.” His fingers drifted from my hair to my cheek, tracing the line of my cheekbone with clumsy reverence. “Skin’s soft too. You’re so fucking soft here, but…” He pressed his palm flat against my face like he was trying to prove a point to himself. “Hard where it matters.”
My heart was doing something violent and arrhythmic. “Stop.”
“Don’t wanna.” But his eyes were already drifting closed. “Wanna look at you. M’not allowed to look usually. You get all—” He made a stabbing motion with his free hand. “Pointy.”
“Pointy.”
His hand drifted down to catch my wrist, thumb pressing against my pulse like he was counting heartbeats. “These hands. So good at stabbing things.”
A laugh tried to escape me. I swallowed it. “You need to rest.”
“Stabbing,” he continued, like I hadn’t spoken.
His thumb traced circles over my pulse point, each touch sending sparks racing up my arm.
“And probably other things too. Haven’t thought about them doing other things though.
That would be...” He frowned, like he was working through complex philosophy instead of barely coherent thoughts. “Inappropriate.”
My pulse kicked against my throat. “Varyth.”
“Definitely haven’t thought about them—” He cut himself off, jaw working like he was trying to swallow words that wanted out. “Nope. Not thinking about it. Very appropriate thoughts only.”
“You should sleep,” I said again, but the words came out breathy. Ruined.
“Mm.” He glanced down to where his thumb was moving against my wrist, hypnotised by the motion. “You stayed.”
“You’re injured.”
“You stayed anyway. In my bed. Second time now.” His expression, still relaxed from the tonic but carrying an edge of something rawer underneath. “That’s not fair.”
I finally looked at him properly. His hair was mussed from where he’d been lying down, silver strands falling across his forehead in a way that made him look younger. More vulnerable. The control he wore like armour had been stripped away, leaving only this. Whatever this was.
“What’s not fair?”
He didn’t answer. Just shifted closer, and before I could process what was happening, his arms came around me. Strong despite the injuries, insistent despite the tonic dragging at his system.
“Varyth, you’re going to hurt yourself.”
But he was already tugging me down, pulling me against the solid heat of him with a determination that suggested the pain tonic had obliterated his sense of self-preservation along with his filter.
I tried to resist. Tried to maintain some kind of distance.
But he was surprisingly strong when he wanted to be, and my body—my treacherous, stupid body—remembered the last time I’d been this close.
Remembered safety and warmth and the way his heartbeat had lulled me into the first nightmare-free sleep I’d had in months.
He buried his face in my hair, breathing deep like he was trying to inhale my entire existence.
“Not fair,” he murmured against my scalp, the words vibrating through me. “Second time you’ve been in my bed and I can’t...”
He trailed off, but his nose dragged down from my hair to my temple, following some invisible path that made my breath catch. Lower, along my cheekbone, until his face was pressed against my neck and his breath was warm against the sensitive skin of my throat.
“Really not fair,” he breathed, and dragged his nose up the column of my throat like he was trying to memorise the scent of me.
Every nerve ending I possessed went into immediate crisis mode.
“You’re high,” I managed. “The tonic—”
“Fucking tonic.” But he didn’t pull away. If anything, he pressed closer, one hand coming up to tangle in my hair, holding me in place. “Know what’s worse? Being sober around you. At least like this I can admit it.”
“Admit what?”
His lips brushed my pulse point—not a kiss, just contact—and the sound that escaped me was absolutely mortifying.
“That I think about you,” he said against my skin.
“All the fucking time. Think about how you look when you’re angry, when you’re fighting, when you’re with your children and you think no one’s watching.
” His hand tightened in my hair. “Think about what it felt like waking up with you in my arms, and how you looked at me like I’d committed some unforgivable sin just by existing in the same space. ”
“I didn’t.”
“You did.” His voice was rough, raw, stripped of everything except honesty and too much pain medication. “And I understood. Because you loved him. Love him. And I’m just...” He exhaled against my throat. “I’m just the bastard who keeps pulling you into his bed when you’d rather be anywhere else.”
My heart cracked straight down the middle.
“That’s not—” I started, but the words tangled in my throat.
Because what could I say? That he was wrong?
That I didn’t wake up hating myself for finding comfort in his arms?
That some traitorous part of me hadn’t spent the entire day trying not to think about the way his heartbeat had felt beneath my cheek?
I’d be lying.
And I was so fucking tired of lying.
His breathing had started to even out, the tonic finally winning its war against his consciousness. But his arms didn’t loosen, and his face stayed pressed against my neck, and I could feel every word he’d just shattered me with branding itself into my skin.
“Varyth,” I whispered.
No response. Just the steady rise and fall of his chest, the warm puff of his breath against my throat.
He was out.
And I was trapped in his bed, in his arms, with every word he’d just said echoing through my skull like accusations I didn’t have a defence for.
Fuck.
I should move. Should extract myself and retreat to the safety of my own chambers before this could become even more complicated than it already was.
Instead, I stayed exactly where I was, my hands coming up to rest against his chest, feeling his heartbeat slow and steady beneath my palm.
Just for a moment, I told myself.
Just until I was sure he was really asleep.
Just until I could convince my body to stop fitting against his like we were two pieces of something that had been broken and poorly reassembled.
Outside, night pressed against the windows, and the fire burned down to embers, and I lay in Varyth’s bed trying not to think about how this was the second time I’d felt safe in someone else’s arms since Navaire died.
Trying not to think about how wrong that should feel.
How wrong it didn’t.
Fuck.