Chapter 6 #3
A humorless smile ghosted across his lips. “I trust her to be what the Fir Dé made her: loyal, rigid, and ruled by the laws she was born beneath. Whatever else she is, Kynra acts according to her sense of honor. And to her, I am a betrayal she cannot forgive.”
“And me?”
“You,” he said, with certainty, “are everything she was taught to fear.”
Elara’s pulse quickened.
“You are under my protection now, Eilíara. Kynra and her warriors may posture as though they would harm you, but they would not dare—not while you stand at my side.”
She exhaled a shaky breath and tried to hold on to that promise, tried to fold it somewhere safe inside herself.
But there was no space left. There was a hole in her chest. A raw, pulsing thing where Ivan had been ripped away.
But it wasn’t just him. It was Tristan. Avis.
Saria. Dario. Did any of them make it out alive?
“Hey.” Reynnar tipped her chin with a single finger.
“We’ve survived worse. You and I.” His thumb grazed her jaw, and her shoulders sagged at the touch, a small collapse she hadn’t meant to give away.
She wanted to believe him, to nod and let him keep that scrap of hope.
But the sorrow held fast. And the shame left no room.
His eyes flickered, searching hers as his Draoth brushed the edges of her mind—soft, tentative. The ghost of a hand trailing down her spine. She shivered.
“Eilíara, I—”
A knock split the quiet.
A Turlaith slipped inside, stiff-backed and expressionless, carrying a tray. He didn’t speak. Didn’t even look at them. Just crossed the room with a soldier’s precision, set the tray on the table, and left.
Elara eyed the food.
Roots and mushrooms—thick-stemmed and still steaming—spread over a bed of grains and bitter greens. A wedge of bread cracked with salt. A smear of what looked like nettle paste.
Strange.
For such ruthless Sídhe, the lack of protein was…surprising. She hadn’t known what to expect, but certainly not plants arranged in tidy little piles. Shaking her head, she reached for a mushroom, too tired to care if it tasted like dirt.
Reynnar caught her wrist before it reached her mouth. Without a word, he plucked the mushroom from her fingers, sniffed it carefully, brows furrowing for a heartbeat. Then he gave a short nod and handed it back.
Not poisoned, then.
He sat beside her and ate in silence, tearing off pieces of bread and pushing most of the roots and greens in her direction—just like he used to in the Pit.
Without asking. Without making a show of it.
Once the tray was mostly picked clean, he stood, crossed the room, and collapsed onto the narrow bed.
One arm tucked behind his head, the other thrown over his eyes.
Her chewing slowed.
Was she—did he mean for her to share a bed with him?
Her gaze flicked to the mattress—narrow, barely wide enough for one, let alone two. Something knotted beneath her ribs, a fluttering tightness that made it hard to breathe. She had never shared a bed before. Not with a lover. Not with a friend.
But this was Reynnar.
And that changed things. Didn’t it?
They were simply exhausted, she told herself. The room was cold, and the floor looked like it would break her if she tried to sleep on it. That was all. It didn’t have to mean anything.
“Have you built up the courage to come lie beside me yet?” Reynnar asked, one eye cracked open.
Her mouth twitched, a tired breath escaping.
She didn’t have the energy to unravel the knot of unease in her gut.
Instead, she scrubbed at her eyes until they burned and crossed the room.
Reynnar stirred at the sound, lowering his arm from over his face, the slow movement of his body as familiar to her as her own heartbeat.
Without a word, he drew back the quilt, making space for her.
Elara didn’t trust her voice, so she said nothing. The mattress dipped beneath her weight, and a breath later the quilt settled over them both, warm and oddly careful. She lay still, pulse thundering in her ears.
After a breath, she turned toward him—
—and the room fell away.
She was back in the Pit. Back where they had slept side by side with bars between them.
Where she had traced his face by orb-light, terrified of forgetting it—the shadow of his lashes, the angle of his jaw, the faint scar beneath his left eye.
She’d memorized him as if memory were a kind of survival. As if it might be all she had left.
But they weren’t there anymore.
They had survived. They were here. Alive.
Tears slid hot and fast down her cheeks before she even realized they’d come.
Reynnar shifted closer, and his fingers curled around hers like he’d reached into her chest and closed them around her heart.
Like he’d heard every thought she hadn’t dared voice.
He always knew. He always had. She squeezed his hand and watched the tension in his face ease, something raw and aching slipping from his eyes.
They lay that way as the dark gathered, and Elara closed her eyes and asked nothing of tomorrow. For now, this was enough.