42. Ballroom Dance V #3
Ciarán reached around me to push the drawer closed. He wrapped his arm over my stomach and held me against him as we stared at the drawer together.
“Ciarán—”
“No,” he whispered. “I’m not ready.”
I didn’t understand, but I nodded anyway. I didn’t need Liam back for me. I wanted him back for Ciarán’s sake.
“I need to focus on whatever comes next,” he said, but it sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than me. “His memories might distract me or—”
He cut off and held me tighter.
“Or what?” I prompted.
“Or I might not have the strength to do what needs to be done at Rift. If it comes down to you or the worlds, Wren, I don’t know what I’ll do. Add Liam to that equation, and I might condemn everyone if your life ends up on the line.”
I replied with a shaky laugh and pressed into his chest with my back.
“It’ll be easy once we’re through that rock,” I insisted. “No sacrifices necessary.”
“I hope so. But until then, Liam stays in the drawer.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “You make the call on Liam. And if you change your mind—agh!”
Pain ricocheted through my abdomen, and I cut off in a cry.
“Wren!” Ciarán twisted me around and pressed me back onto the twin bed.
I drew my knees up to my chest, breathing through my nose as I tried to contain the electricity running through my nerves.
I swallowed the pain and smiled through a tight grimace. “I’m fine. It’s just the Skal here. It’s a lot.”
Ciarán’s eyes softened as he took my hands. “Dammit, Wren, you should’ve said something!”
“No, no, it’s okay. Once we figure out that rock, we’ll be able to reseal my grandmother, and I’ll be fine.”
He couldn’t shove me in a freezer like we had with Fana. There was no escape from the Skal eating me from the inside. The ever-present mountains pushed against me. If I let even a little bit of magick free, it might be what pushed them over the edge.
Gams would die. This would all be for nothing.
“I can take it away from you, you know,” Ciarán murmured. He climbed onto the bed to kneel in front of me, my hands still clasped in his. “Through the tether.”
Another electric pain coursed through my stomach, and I nodded. It was such a simple solution. I felt stupid the idea hadn’t occurred to me. “That would probably be good.”
Ciarán’s fingers tightened around mine, and I closed my eyes as I exhaled.
Skal fled my body, siphoned down the tether towards Ciarán. My abdomen muscles unclenched, and while my stomach was still upset, the electric pain ebbed.
Orange light pressed against my eyelids, and when I opened my eyes, Ciarán had released the Skal in a thousand floating sparks that hung on the air. We sat hand-in-hand on Liam’s bed at the center of our own, personal nebula of magick.
“Is that better?” Ciarán’s hand lifted to my face, and his thumb brushed my cheek.
“Yes.” I leaned into his palm and took a deep breath. My lungs expanded easier than they had in days, and my body was lighter. I hadn’t realized how many muscles I’d been clenching as the magick had eaten at me.
I smiled at Ciarán in the light of his nebula, but the orange light glittered against a wet path that traced his cheek.
“You’re crying,” I murmured.
His lips pressed together in an apologetic smile, and his thumb brushed my cheek a second time, as if to wipe away his own tears from the wrong face.
“I’m sorry to worry you. I just can’t help thinking I might be the worst Grimguard who ever lived.”
“No,” I said through a breathy laugh. “Ciarán, you are the greatest Grimguard.”
He shook his head, and his eyes roved over my cheeks and nose, as if to memorize the constellation of my freckles.
“After we close the Rift, I want so badly to stay. I want it so badly that I imagine it feels like that Skal did eating you from the inside.” His breath wavered as he exhaled, and his eyes rose from my cheeks to my eyes. “But if I do, I don’t know if I’ll have the strength to abide by my oaths.”
I was used to hunger for Skal by now. This new hunger, however… It rose in my chest, hopeful and heavy.
“I don’t care about your oaths,” I said.
“You should.”
“I didn’t make any oaths or promises, and I didn’t choose to be a Saergrim. I didn’t ask you to swear yourself to me and the Rift, so no. Your oaths don’t mean anything to me.”
He wanted to stay. It was his dogma that was in the way.
“But I did choose this,” he said. “My parents were the last Grimguards. Someone needed to pick up the mantle to keep the Saergrim safe and protect the worlds from each other.”
“But Skalterra isn’t a threat. Ferrin is. If we have to separate our worlds to keep Ferrin from seizing unlimited power, then fine. But I don’t care about the Rift, or Saergrims, or Grimguards beyond that, and once the Rift is safe again, I don’t see why your oaths have to matter anymore.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying you should live for you first, and your title of Grimguard second.”
“And if I want to live for you first?”
“I don’t want that.” I frowned at his lips rather than meet his eyes.
“What do you want?” His face was closer now, and I was lost in the orange haze of his irises.
I swallowed hard. There were a lot of answers to that question.
“I want you to break the rules.”
“Would you really ask that of me?”
“Yes. Your Lady demands it.”
“Break all the rules?” His forehead pressed against mine, and his reluctant grin was inches from my face.
“Of course not.” I felt the heat of my blush rising in my cheeks, but our faces were so close now that I doubt he noticed. “Only break the rules you want to.”
“Do you know which rule I’d like to break first, my Lady?” His hand cupped the back of my neck while the other played with the hem of my shirt.
That new hunger reared, but I didn’t know if it was from my end of the tether or his.
“No,” I lied.
Ciarán leaned in, slow and gentle, as if to give me every opportunity to reconsider, and locked his lips over mine. I gasped against his mouth.
“That’s a good rule to break,” I breathed.
“Would you like me to keep breaking them?” he whispered into my lips.
“I—I think so.”
He hesitated, pulling back an inch. “That’s not good enough. I need you to know, Wren. I need you to be sure.”
“I told you I don’t care about your oaths.”
“It’s not my oaths I’m worried about.” His brow furrowed in gentle concern. “It’s you. I want to break every rule with you, but if you don’t want to—”
“I’m sure,” I said.
It was both of us, I realized, that was desperate for the other. It was a shared need that vibrated along the tether, especially with the unknown looming ahead. This might be our last chance to be together.
The thought broke my heart, and it made me want to be that much nearer to him.
His brow, however, remained knit in uncertainty, so I opened the bond between us and let him feel every thought I’d ever had about him.
Every time he’d annoyed me, my reluctant gratitude when he’d saved me, my desperation to keep him alive, the way I’d turned Ergoth’s strath inside out to save not me and not the worlds, but him.
And my deep, guttural need to keep him beside me, because what was the point of all that if I were to lose him again?
His hands tightened around me once more, and this time I initiated the kiss, pressing into him, tangling my fingers in his hair, and relishing the gentle heat of his face against mine.
It was better than our first kiss, probably because we both had more blood this time, and that blood now hammered in my chest and in my ears.
We’d been in each other’s heads for months. I had already started to doubt where Wren ended and Ciarán began, and his arms wrapped around me felt like the most natural thing in both the worlds.
I was safe here. I was loved here.
Not for my title or for the magick that I was capable of, not for what I could provide as a tool, weapon, or ally, but for me.
And as we both yielded to mutual trust, that ever-present bond between us sang.