Chapter Ninety
Meida
Varic
I stagger forward with the need to learn if she’s hurt before coming to an abrupt halt and wincing from the shooting pain emanating from my ankle.
Her eyes narrow, and I cover my weakness as well as I can with the next step. Yet her expression hardens, spearing me with a prickle of fear. Because maybe I’ve miscalculated. Maybe I was wrong about her feelings, as she appears to hold some sort of murderous rage in her visage.
Does she blame me for what happened? Does she think my presence further endangers her and all of her Guards? Or maybe she believes my appointment is the reason the Throne Room was decimated. The reason all our lives were threatened to a greater extent.
Then her expression softens, and she sends me a thread of compassion, conveying a deep and knowing level of empathy, while all I can do is shake my head as a grin begins to form over my lips.
Gods, this witch is my favorite mystery.
She moves toward me, and I no longer give a fuck if she’s mad at me for something I’ve done. I can try to fix it later. Right now, I just need to make sure she’s okay.
“Are you hurt?” I ask, and she shakes her head.
She’s here. She’s standing right here. Breathing, with her heart beating. And I need her.
I reach forward and trace my fingertips over the backs of her hands, needing this skin-to-skin contact.
I trail my thumbs down and over her palms when my nostrils flare with the indentations, so I grab hold of her hands and turn them over.
My heart sinks when the crescent shapes of her nails mark her palms as I suspected. Proof of her distress from my failure.
I bring her left hand up to my lips and hate the chill that’s come over them.
“You don’t need to do that.” Her voice is commanding, yet also shame-filled.
My lips rise in a smile as I kiss the soft skin, then bring her right hand up to repeat the gesture. She shivers, and I greedily revel in the power I wield to have this sort of effect on her.
“Yes, I do,” I say with such conviction, and I hope she understands it to mean this isn’t just for her benefit. I need to do this for myself just as much. Because I want to, and I will.
Then, without needing to conjure it, my healing magic takes her pain from her.
It smooths the crescent marks left by her nails as a new sort of heat burns within my chest with this burgeoning need to care for her better than I have been.
A turning point where I will no longer be settling in the way that I tend to her.
One which will most likely garner much argument from her.
“I will take care of you, Tasch,” I promise.
A slow breath seeps from between her lips when I delicately trace a trail up her arm with my fingertips until I curve my arms around her back and pull her in.
With the need to feel her body against my own, and my heart aching along with every sob winding its way from her.
My chest feels as if it has been split down the center as she releases all of the pain from what we have been made to endure.
She shakes in my arms, and I want to take away all of her pain.
I can handle it. I can hold it for her. For however long she needs.
Because she shouldn’t have to bear this alone.
“Mei waella,” I whisper into her hair, and her arms flex around me.
“You’re okay,” she whispers, the heat of her breath tickling my neck.
I drop my face closer and draw in a breath, feeling utterly desperate as I drink in her deep floral scent.
“Now that I can see you.” Her hair shifts along the outer shell of her ear, and I smile against the side of her head.
“Now that I can hold you, I am.” I break her hold of me with the need to see her face—her body—though I refuse to let go entirely.
Almost as if I need to make sure this isn’t just a dream.
That she doesn’t somehow turn into vapor the moment I release her.
She swallows, and I trace her throat before trailing my fingers over her shoulder and down her back.
Where I dip my fingertips into the curve of her waist, then the swell of her hip, needing to know there’s not a single cut or abrasion.
To ensure she is not bleeding. That she hasn’t been left scarred like I have been.
I grip her harder, bracing as I turn her body to the side. Needing to inspect her further. Seemingly unable to stop myself from checking for some mark, some hurt she couldn’t have possibly escaped without.
“You’re okay?” My voice scrapes along the shredded remnants of my vocal cords.
She nods, and I scan her leather-clad legs through the slits on either side of her skirts, not noticing any slices through the material.
“Now that you’re here,” she says in a surprisingly husky tone, stirring something in me as my eyes fall closed.
I shake my head at the all-consuming panic I felt being inaccurate. That she is somehow here, uninjured, and alive, despite its trying to convince me otherwise. My eyes flare wide, and I assess her more—just to make sure. Needing to believe it’s possible.
“Now that I can hold you, I am.” Her words mirror my own, feeling intangible. Improbable. Carrying through the air like a phantom while her aquamarine eyes stare back at mine with kindness.
My hands pull her closer until we’re chest to chest as she tilts her head back. We never break eye contact while our hearts sync their rhythm, beating in time with one another like two halves of a whole.
I swipe my thumb over the soft skin of her throat, then cup her jaw and marvel at her. Because the way we consider each other, the sensation it brings, is so overwhelming I drop my gaze, which doesn’t help.
I hastily study the shape of her lips with my own feeling unbearably dry as my tongue darts out to wet them. Though my thoughts are consumed with what it would be like to lean forward and press my mouth to hers. To finally kiss her.
A moan slips past her parted lips, and the corner of my mouth tips up in a smirk. Then my brows knit in the center as her expression turns bashful—a contrast to the stern one she usually wears in response.
“What?” she asks, and I shake my head and trace the curve of her cheekbones and the pink hue spreading across the bridge of her nose.
The shine in her aquamarine eyes brightens as her heart slams against her ribs, telling me all I need to know.
“You.” My voice is shredded. Husky. Laced with lust.
Her eyelids droop lower as she lets out a moan, and that’s it. I can’t take it.
I cradle the back of her head and thread my fingers in her hair while she tilts her chin up in challenge, and while I want nothing more than to take it on, all I can do is drink her in.
Wondering. Waiting. Wanting.
“So it was you. You sent your love—” Her voice gives out and squeezes my heart.
I nod. “And you sent yours in return.” My voice is deeper, thicker, and I can’t help but look down at her with hunger, craving her more than anything I’ve ever known to be possible.
“Mei meida.” My claim passes my lips without meaning to name it.
Without meaning to be so possessive.
She gasps, pupils dilating, and my pulse pounds with the need to erase the space between her lips with my own. I pull my lower lip inward and bite down to keep from pressuring her. To keep from taking what I need from her. From doing what I desperately want with her. Always with her.
I have to be sure she truly wants this. I need to know if the look in her eyes is what I think it is or only what I project out of selfishness. Because I refuse to be just one more sorcerer taking advantage of her.
But the way she’s looking at me, the way her eyes widen with pleading.
How her lips quiver on the verge of begging to be kissed—this expression she wears is hers alone.
These feelings she’s sharing, this love she sent to imbue my chest with all the warmth and care she harbors, it’s all her.
And I need to honor her needs as I shake with the same.
To claim her the way I have yearned, hoped, and longed for.
To prove that she is mine—to us both. To prove I want her just as desperately as I ever have.
So I search her eyes, and I love what I find.
“Fuck it.” The words leave me without having thought them.
And that’s it. Now that I have uttered this, I must be a sorcerer of my word.
My fingers thread through her hair as I cradle her neck and draw her in, memorizing her expression the moment before we share this. I savor this sense of elation I’ve dreamed about too many times to count, for what feels like a dozen lifetimes after too many years have been stolen from us.
My chest floods with every emotion I’ve needed to hold in.
Every urge. Every moment I was tempted to press my lips to hers.
Every time I restrained myself rather than taking the risk for it to have been our first. Because this shouldn’t be the moment—this stress and trauma should not be the background for the first time we share this connection, or even our hundredth.
Yet, here we are, having earned a lifetime of holding onto each other.
A future where we can kiss as often as we choose, simply because we want to.
The heat from her gaze rises to mine, and my heart squeezes with guilt as I have become utterly incapable of breaking this spell she’s cast over my being, simply by existing.
Now all I can do is pull her in while my eyes fall closed, and I revel in this moment where it feels as if Tasch and I are the only two beings in existence, when I finally—fucking finally—crush my lips to hers with the promise there will be more.