Chapter 35
Chapter thirty-five
Jack
The wave of dizziness passes, reality settling around us like a comforting blanket. We are back in our flat, and the warmth that is seeping into me is not only the physical kind. Familiar scents wrap around me. We are home.
But something feels wrong. I turn around to face Dyfri, and I freeze.
He is standing by the wall-that-is-not-a-wall that we just walked through, as still as a statue carved from marble.
His arms are wrapped tightly around himself, and his head is down, causing his dark hair to cover his face.
Every line of his body speaks of retreat, of making himself smaller, as if he could disappear entirely if he just tried hard enough.
The sight sends alarm bells ringing through me. This isn’t exhaustion from magical exertion. This is something much worse.
Shit. Is there something wrong with the portal we stepped through, something I couldn’t feel because I don’t have any magic? Is he hurt? Did revealing his power damage him somehow?
“Dyfri!” I bark out in alarm, my voice sharper than I intended.
He flinches at the sound of his name, the movement violent and involuntary, as if my voice has struck him physically. When he rouses himself, there’s something even more broken in his posture that makes my chest tight with panic.
He moves towards our bedroom with long, hurried strides, his steps echoing hollowly in the sudden emptiness between us.
“I’ll just gather some things and then I’ll go.”
The words hit me like a slap. My brain stutters, trying to process what he’s just said.
“Go? Go where?” I splutter in confusion as I watch his retreating back, my heart beginning a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
“Where you won’t have to see me.” His voice is hollow, distant, as if he’s already halfway gone. “I’ll have to come back sometimes, to maintain appearances, but I will endeavour to keep those to a minimum.”
The bottom drops out of my world. My heart leaps up into my throat, cutting off air, cutting off thought. This can’t be happening. He can’t be leaving. Not now. Not after everything we’ve been through, everything we’ve built together.
I spring forward and grab his wrist without thinking, desperation overriding common sense. Dyfri jolts to a stop, every muscle in his body going rigid like I’ve sent an electric current through him.
The reaction is so extreme, so visceral, that I immediately understand my mistake. Hastily, I release him, my hands flying back as if he’s burned me.
“Sorry!” The word tears out of my throat. “Fuck! What is wrong with me? I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that.”
I know better. I know about his past, about the ways he’s been touched without permission. And here I am, proving that I’m no different from the others who’ve hurt him.
Dyfri stays frozen in place, seemingly caught between flight and paralysis. He doesn’t turn to face me, but he doesn’t walk away either. He’s trembling now, fine tremors that speak of a control barely maintained.
“You still wish to touch me?” he whispers, the words so quiet I almost miss them.
The question breaks something fundamental inside my chest. The disbelief in his voice, the way he asks it like the answer could go either way, like my wanting him is somehow in question.
“Of course,” I say, and I put every ounce of certainty I possess into those two words.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Dyfri turns around. It’s like watching a flower bloom in reverse, each movement careful and hesitant. His dark eyes bore into mine when he finally faces me. Searching. Probing. Looking for the lie he’s convinced must be there.
The intensity of his gaze is overwhelming. I feel exposed, turned inside out, every secret thought laid bare under that desperate scrutiny.
“You are in shock,” he says eventually, his voice clinical and detached. “When your mind catches up, you’ll hate me.”
The matter-of-fact way he says it, like it’s an inevitable truth rather than a fear, makes my stomach clench.
“Why?” I blurt out in complete bewilderment. My heart is beating so loud it is the only thing I can hear, drowning out reason and logic and everything except the need to understand why he’s doing this to us.
“Because I am something to be feared,” he says softly, and then he drops my gaze. Lowers his eyes to the floor like he can’t bear to see the moment when I realise he’s right.
The admission is so quiet, so broken, that it takes a moment to sink in. When it does, my chest tightens until I can barely breathe. Seeing him this distraught is awful. This is Dyfri, my brilliant, complex, wonderful husband, and he’s standing here convinced that he’s a monster.
“I’m useful to Silas and Cai right now,” he whispers, his voice getting smaller with each word. “But afterwards...” He trails off, unable or unwilling to voice whatever horrible ending he’s imagining.
I reach for his hand instinctively, then stop myself, hovering just above his skin. The space between us feels like an ocean.
“Oh, Love.” The endearment slips out before I can stop it, soft and aching. “They don’t hate you. They were surprised and taken aback, but none of them want to hurt you.”
I’m not the brightest, and I don’t know a thing about magic, but I’m pretty good at reading people. The looks on their faces in that warehouse weren’t fear or revulsion, they were awe. Wonder. The kind of respect you show something sacred and powerful.
I’m sure I’m right, and it’s Dyfri’s trauma clouding his judgment, painting every reaction in the worst possible light.
He peeks up at me through his lashes, and the sheer disbelief in his expression is breaking my heart into a thousand jagged pieces. He really can’t believe that people don’t want to hurt him. His eyes are a little frantic, bright with a brittleness that speaks of glass about to shatter.
“They hurt me because they feared me,” he says, and I know instinctively that we are no longer talking about the Resistance.
“Scared when the only thing they knew was that I was half-unseelie and just come of age.” His voice cracks slightly on the words. “Imagine if they knew how powerful I was? I had to hide it.”
The picture he’s painting is devastating. A child learning to make himself smaller, dimmer, less threatening so that the adults around him wouldn’t see him as something to be destroyed.
Gently, carefully, I take his hand. He lets me, and when he does, he hides an anguished sob with a hitch of breath that nearly undoes me completely.
“I didn’t want to scare people and I didn’t want to be given to my uncle.”
I have no idea what he is talking about. I don’t think Dyfri really knows either, the words seem to be tumbling out of some deep, wounded place where logic doesn’t live. All I know is that he is upset and hurting, and that’s the only thing that matters right now.
“Can I hug you?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper.
My arms are aching to hold him. To squeeze my care and concern into him through skin and bone and whatever magic allows souls to touch. I want to hold him so tight his bones can feel he is not alone anymore, that he will never be alone again as long as I have breath in my body.
Dyfri nods, the movement small and uncertain, and I wrap myself around him immediately. I press myself so close that there is no telling where I end and he begins, until we are one entity breathing in the same rhythm, sharing the same heartbeat.
His breath hitches again, and his entire body trembles against mine, like he’s coming apart at the seams.
“I don’t hate you,” I tell him, the words fierce and certain. “I’m not going to hurt you. I don’t want you to go anywhere, now, or ever.”
Dyfri inhales sharply, the sound cutting through the quiet like a knife.
My stomach flips over into a hard knot as I realise what I’ve just said. The truth has tumbled out without permission, but now that it’s in the open, I can’t take it back. Don’t want to take it back.
“I’m sorry, that was a shitty time to blurt that out, but now that I have.
..” I pause and take a deep breath, gathering my courage.
“When the portals close, take me with you or stay on Earth. Please! I know I shouldn’t make any demands of you.
I’m sorry. But if I lose you I don’t think I will survive. ”
The confession hangs between us like a bridge neither of us is sure we’re brave enough to cross.
Dyfri moves, and I release him reluctantly, giving him space to breathe, to think, to run if that’s what he needs to do. But he doesn’t go far, just back enough to stare into my eyes while my hands rest on his shoulders like supplication.
He stares at me deeply. Intently. Searching my soul with the intensity of someone looking for salvation or damnation and not sure which they’ll find. I stand calmly and allow him to see the truth of me, every raw edge and desperate hope, just how much I mean every word.
The silence stretches between us, fragile as spun glass.
He blinks, and then he moves forward. His lips brush against mine and my heart goes completely mad, hammering against my ribs like it’s trying to break free and merge with his.
Dyfri kisses me.
The contact is electric, sending shockwaves through every nerve ending. It’s soft, careful, tender, and completely devastating. My soul lights up like a supernova and my toes curl in my shoes as every cell in my body recognises its other half.
He tastes of starlight and futures and everything I’ve ever wanted. Kissing Dyfri doesn’t feel new, it feels like coming home to a place I didn’t know I was searching for. Like finding the missing piece of myself I never knew was lost.
When he breaks away, I’m left gasping, the world spinning around us in slow, lazy circles. He watches me with bright eyes, pupils blown wide, his lips puffy and utterly irresistible. I lean towards them, pulled by gravity and desire and something deeper than want.
His hand on my chest stops me. I blink at him, dazed and wanting.
“Do you mean it?” he says hoarsely, his voice raw with hope and terror in equal measure.
My brows furrow in confusion. Mean what? That I want him? That I love him? That I’d follow him to the ends of the earth and beyond?
“Kisses are meaningful. Important,” Dyfri says solemnly, his eyes never leaving mine.
Understanding blooms slowly, like sunrise after the longest night. Relief surges in my chest, warm and overwhelming.
“Is that why you don’t let me kiss you?” I breathe. It’s not some personal failing on my part, not rejection or lack of desire.
A pretty pink tinge colours Dyfri’s cheekbones. He nods, suddenly shy despite everything we’ve shared.
“What do kisses mean?” I ask, though I think I already know. Can feel the weight of significance in the air between us.
Dyfri swallows hard, his throat working. “There isn’t a word for it in English. The closest is... devotion.”
Devotion. The word settles into my chest like a key turning in a lock. Of course. Of course it would mean everything to him, this gesture that I’ve been treating so casually.
I smile, slow and sure and full of everything I feel for this impossible, wonderful man. I nod, letting him see my understanding, my acceptance, my absolute certainty.
I lean forward. Dyfri’s eyes widen, then flutter closed like butterfly wings.
I press my lips against his.
And the universe explodes.
This isn’t the careful, questioning kiss from before.
This is devotion made manifest, souls recognising their perfect match across space and time and dimensions.
I wrap my arms around his back and kiss my Dyfri deeply, utterly, with all the passion in my soul and all the love in my heart and all the desperate need I’ve been carrying since the moment I first saw him.
He melts into it immediately, clinging onto me as if I’m his anchor in a stormy sea. His mouth opens under mine and suddenly we’re not two separate people kissing, we’re one entity discovering itself, galaxies colliding and forming something entirely new.
Magic sparks between us, not the careful controlled power I’ve seen Dyfri wield, but something wild and raw and cosmic.
I can taste starlight on his tongue, feel the echo of his heartbeat in my own chest, sense the exact moment when his soul reaches out and tangles itself with mine in a way that feels permanent and perfect and absolutely right.
Time stops. The world stops. Everything stops except this moment, this kiss, this perfect joining of everything we are and everything we could be.
I kiss and kiss him, and I don’t think I’m ever going to stop. Don’t want to stop. I want to spend eternity right here in his arms, tasting his devotion and offering my own in return.