2. The Fox Learns to Love #2
Her legs carried her up the final landing, lungs screaming. She stumbled through a pair of tall glass doors onto a sweeping marble balcony. The night air hit her like a slap, cold and real and ungoverned. Wind tore loose the pins in her hair until her curls flew wild around her face.
No matter how far I run, he'll find me. And he'll smile while he cages me, convinced he's saving me.
So what's left?
The world stretched far below in a curtain of stars and silver gardens. Her fingers trembled as they gripped the balcony edge.
I was never born a slave. I would rather die than live like one.
She climbed onto the ledge, toes curling over the stone, the wind pushing against her back. One step would end it — the pain, the quiet, the illusion of choice.
What if I jumped? What if I just stopped?
Her foot lifted.
I'd rather die screaming than live silent. I'd rather fall on my terms than walk beside him in silk.
She shifted her weight. Then?—
SMACK. Something hit her square in the face.
"OW—DAMN IT!" she shouted, stumbling back and clutching her forehead.
A shimmering blur spun around her, a massive dragonfly iridescent and furious, darting through the air like it had come to fight the wind itself.
"What the hell?" she yelled, swatting at it. "Where were you when I needed help escaping? Where the hell were you then?" The dragonfly buzzed closer, spiraling around her head, wings whirring. Her voice cracked as tears spilled.
"Why do you only show up to watch me fall?" She turned from the ledge just long enough to breathe. Her fists clenched. “No one gets to decide when I live or die, not Malec, not the king, not you. My life is my own!”
She stepped toward the ledge again, one foot forward, then the other. The wind curled beneath her dress, lifting it like a banner.
The dragonfly dove into her hair, tangling itself near her temple, wings flapping madly. "Stop it," she hissed. "Stop?—"
Her voice broke. "You can come with me. Maybe we'll be together in the next life."
Allora put her foot over the ledge.
And then hands. Strong. Desperate.
They seized her from behind and yanked her back so hard the impact drove the air from her lungs. She yelped as her back hit a chest, broad and familiar, and arms locked around her like steel bands. She couldn't draw a breath.
Malec.
His chest heaved against her spine, burning gasps tearing through the silence. He must've run. Run like the world was ending.
"NO!" she screamed, thrashing in his grip. "LET GO OF ME!"
She clawed and kicked, fists slamming against whatever part of him she could reach. Her nails raked across his skin, her heel struck his shin. But he didn't move, didn't even grunt. He just held her tighter, as if letting go meant death. As if she was the last thread holding him to this world.
"You bastard!" she shrieked, her voice splintering into sobs.
"You took everything from me! Even my name!
" Her fists pounded against his chest, raw and relentless.
"I'm not yours. I was never yours. I'm not a creature you can domesticate.
I don't even recognize myself anymore. I'm just some pretty slave you can f?—"
"Stop." His voice was hoarse. "STOP!"
Each word struck like a lash. She felt him flinch, his body tight with anguish. Slowly, as if every movement cost him, he loosened his grip and turned her to face him.
His eyes turned feral, tears gathering at the corners as his expression cracked wide with disbelief and fury. "You would end your life?" he shouted, the words raw. "To escape me?"
Her lips trembled, but she met his gaze. "It's the only way to be free."
"No." He pulled her back into his arms, tighter this time, desperately, trembling. "No. If you had jumped?—"
He buried his face in her hair, inhaling until his lungs burned, pulling her against him like she might slip away. His arms, shaking, pressed her close as if he could anchor her soul back to the world.
"I would've followed you," he whispered into her curls.
Allora went still.
His grip loosened just enough for her to breathe. One hand slid up, fingers trembling as they cradled the back of her head. His forehead pressed to hers, the closeness unbearable and suffocating, yet still intimate.
"You would've died," he said, voice low and broken. "When that portal collapsed, I was the only one fast enough…I had to take you."
The words sat between them like a wound, fresh and bleeding.
"I couldn't breathe when I saw you on that ledge," he said. "Ready to go, and I—gods, Allora—I almost fell to my knees. I've lost wars, been stabbed, burned, buried. Nothing ever hurt like that. Nothing!"
She didn't answer. Because she was so stunned she couldn't answer.
"I'm not asking you to love me," he said. "I understand what I've done, who I am. But I can't exist without you. So if you die." His voice broke. "Take me with you."
She stared at him. The Silver Fox, the Commander, the captor all fell away, leaving only what was shattered beneath.
Without a word, he scooped her into his arms. She didn't resist. Her body hung like a fading ember of who she'd once been. He turned from the ledge. But his eyes glanced back once, just once, to the stone railing. The distance was nothing. If he'd been a heartbeat slower, she would've been gone.
The thought gutted him. And he held her even tighter, as if the gods might still come for her.
Malec swallowed, his throat scorched by the scream he couldn't release.
The image of her broken body at the base of the tower had etched itself into the back of his eyes.
It would never leave him. Her blood, her limbs twisted unnaturally, the life drained from her face.
It didn't matter that it hadn't happened.
It almost had, and that was enough to unravel him.
This was why he needed her close, why distance between them felt like bleeding out.
She was all he had left after sacrificing everything — his job as a glorified Canariae hunter, his disbanded command.
He had relinquished title and station and legacy.
Every scrap of glory he had once clung to, surrendered.
And for what? A fleeting dream of peace beside the only soul who had ever undone him with a single look.
She kept resisting, clawing her way out of his arms as though he were the monster hiding beneath her bed, and gods help him, maybe he was.
Halfway down the marble corridor, his pace faltered. He stopped and set her down, neither rough nor gentle. Her legs trembled as they took her weight. He caught her hand immediately, fingers curling possessively around hers, thumb brushing over her knuckles as if to remind himself she was real.
She didn't pull away, but she didn't squeeze back either.
The warmth in her had retreated somewhere he couldn't reach.
The shift wasn't calm, just numb and resigned, and that killed him more than all her fury.
He slowed their steps as they walked, keeping his body close and protective.
His eyes dropped to her frame, scanning and absorbing.
She was lighter than she should be, too light.
The bones in her wrists had grown more visible, shoulders hunched with weariness that hadn't come from sleeplessness alone.
Had she been eating?
She'd been violently ill weeks ago, her body weakened and wracked from that canariae sickness. But now she looked as though despair had hollowed her out from the inside, leaving only the skin of who she'd once been.
A slow rage began to rise in him, hot and relentless. It wasn't directed at her but at himself. He stopped walking.
She looked up at him, startled. Her tearstained face caught the light, making her look so young and raw.
Curls clung to her cheeks in wet, wild spirals.
Her lips trembled with unshed words. And in her eyes...
in her eyes was the wreckage he had made.
Grief and fear and a desperation to belong to herself again.
She was drowning beneath the weight of his love, his obsession, the thousand mistakes that had brought her to this place.
And she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
He reached for her slowly, reverently. A single trembling hand brushed a damp curl from her cheek. His thumb ghosted along the line of her jaw, fingers soft despite all they had done.
"I didn't mean to frighten you," he said, his voice broken.
She didn't respond.
"But seeing you on that ledge..." He swallowed, voice thick. "I've never been that afraid. In my entire cursed life."
He dropped his gaze, ashamed even to say it.
"If you had jumped, I would have leapt after you." The words came quieter now. "Because without you, I wouldn't know how to stay behind."
Allora's eyes fluttered in disbelief. Her body did not move, yet her expression revealed the impact of words she had not expected to hear.
"I can't lose you again," he whispered.
He inhaled shakily, pressing the breath into his ribs as if that might steady the storm inside him.
"I want you safe. Even if that means letting you go somewhere I hate."
Her brows lifted slightly, barely there. His eyes searched hers.
"Do you truly want to stay with Surian?" he asked gently.
Light bloomed in her so quickly it startled him, softening the edges of her grief.
The gold undertones in her dark skin seemed to awaken with sudden warmth.
Her lips parted. Her chin wobbled. She nodded once, and in that single movement, he saw her pull herself back from the edge.
A flicker of will and fragile hope. It stole the breath from his lungs.
A quiet surrender cracked through his chest without making a sound.
He looked away, exhaling through his nose, and turned. He began walking again, this time toward the small private dining room Surian had invited him to. Toward Surian, toward the one person who might be able to give Allora what he could not.