Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“You packed the book, but where are the furs?” Ryot fairly growls at me.
He’s holding the Treatise on Tactical Collapse with his left hand as he frantically digs through the pack with his right.
I flounder, because I know exactly what he’s going to find in my survival pack—dry rations, frostroot, laomai, flint and steel, a waterskin, aldersigh, a needle and thread, rope, a compass, and bandages.
No furs.
“I think I forgot to pack furs,” I say, my voice small. I don’t think. I know.
“What do you mean you forgot your furs?”
I wince. He’s livid—and I can’t blame him.
We’ve made it to the top of Brackenfold Peak—the second highest mountain of the Valespire Peaks—on a practice climb of Elandors Veil.
It’s a kind of cold I’ve not experienced before.
Wind cuts at my face like a blade. Ice coats every rock and crevice, making every step and handhold treacherous.
My fingers are nearly numb and would be frostbitten without the frostroot lining my gloves.
My toes, too. Now, we’ve made it nearly to the top, right as the sun has dipped below the horizon.
The temperature is plummeting faster than the light is waning.
We don’t even have Einarr with us, because this is something I’ll have to do without a faravar.
We need to make camp, and I forgot furs to make shelter.
“For fuck’s sake,” he says, dragging a hand down his face—it scrapes when he gets to his beard, and then he throws his head back and looks up at the heavens above as if the gods might have answers for him.
He tosses the book down on top of my pack like it’s an afterthought, and I scramble for it, holding it against my chest.
“I brought frostroot,” I say.
Ryot’s nostrils flare. His eye twitches.
He glares at me as if I suggested I cuddle a snow cat for body heat.
He turns around, muttering about wards and commonsense, as he drags the furs he brought out of his pack and starts building his little one-man tent.
It’s something you can tell he’s done time and time again.
Even here, with no warmth and the wind clawing at us, he moves with practiced efficiency.
Stakes in the stone. Lines taut. Furs stretched over the frame.
I clutch my book tighter, at a loss. He crouches down and tugs the last corner into place with more force than necessary—his knuckles go white.
“I’m sorry I screwed up,” I say. “But I’ll be fine with my coat. It’s the warmest thing I’ve ever owned.”
Ryot lets out a low, unamused laugh. “You’ll be dead in an hour.”
He doesn’t look at me, just keeps working. I stand there, the wind whipping my hair into my face. He finishes and stands. Without looking at me, he rips open the flap of his tent. “Get in.”
I hesitate. We’ve both been avoiding—as much as we can—moments that leave us alone together. Definitely anything that has us touching . Ryot hasn’t even done hand-to-hand with me since that day he put me on the ground—he always has me fight Faelon or Nyrica or Leif.
My hesitation is one second too long.
“Get. In,” he growls.
I duck inside, because the warmth is draining from my blood with every breath, every beat of my heart, and he’s probably just as cold.
It’s small. No, tight. The kind of space built for one body, and even then, it’s barely big enough.
I press my back against the far side and wrap my shivering arms around my knees, which I’ve pulled up to my chest. Ryot ducks in next, his broad shoulders brushing the sides.
He smells like leather and cinnamon and wind.
Sweet Serephelle, this is bad.
He doesn’t look at me, but starts undoing the clasps on his leather cuffs, methodical and efficient. Every time he moves, he brushes against me. I sit still, my hands still wrapped around the Treatise on Tactical Collapse as if it’s going to teach me how to survive this.
After a long silence, he says, “Next time you forget furs, I’m throwing you off the mountain.”
I huff. “You’d miss me.”
He finally glances at me, a flicker of those blue eyes in the dark. “Don’t make me test that.” A beat. Then, quieter, “You’re shivering.”
“I’m fine.”
He sighs, long and low and so very tired. “You’re not. Come here.”
“What?”
“I’m not going to let you freeze because you’re too stubborn to admit you're human.”
I shift closer to him, and he reaches across the space between us and pulls me in.
We both inhale sharply once he’s holding me tight against his body, my back to his chest, and he lays us down on our sides, his arms around me.
He exhales, breath stirring the hair at the nape of my neck, but neither of us speaks.
Outside, the wind howls as if it’s furious we’ve found even a scrap of warmth.
But in here, in this cramped little tent gradually warming with our combined body heat, it’s just him and me and the beat of our hearts, beginning to sync.
Then he shifts, barely, his nose brushes against the curve where my neck meets my shoulder. He breathes in deep, and it’s not accidental. It’s deliberate.
A soft, involuntary sound escapes my throat.
He stops, but I don’t. I lean back into him, every part of me saying yes .
His teeth scrape down the side of my neck, and I whimper.
I latch my hands on his forearm, where he’s got it wrapped around my stomach, and I hold tight to him, seeking his skin wherever I can find it.
I push my hips back into him, and the feel of his hard length against my ass provokes a groan from both of us.
He tightens his grip and flips me over so that we’re face to face and he’s on top of me, his wandering lips finding mine.
Our mouths collide on a desperate breath—teeth scraping and lips crashing. It’s not gentle. It’s not sweet.
No, this is hard. Like we are. It’s heat and hunger, the kind that lives in your bones and makes you ache, the kind that says I need you not I want you .
Ryot kisses like he fights—commanding, relentless, like he doesn’t know how to hold back, and I don’t want him to try. His hand slides beneath my coat, up my ribs, fingers skating the curve of my breast, testing me.
I arch into him. I’m breathless. I’m alive. I tangle my hands in his hair, fisting tight. His teeth catch on my lower lip, and I groan. Want surges, leaving me hot and helpless. His hips grind into mine, and gods, his hardness pressed against me pulls a whimper from deep in my throat.
I want him. I want him now . I hook my leg around his waist?—
And he stops .
“Leina,” he whispers my name like it’s a prayer. Or maybe a curse. “Fuck.”
He presses his forehead into mine and pants. “We can’t do this.”
“I—” My mind circles, trying to think about the rules, but they elude me.
“We’re not allowed to kiss?” I finally ask.
“Kiss?” He echoes, bewildered. “That’s what you call that?”
I look at him, still panting, still very much pressed beneath the full weight of his body. “Well, I don’t know what you call it in Faraengard, but where I’m from, when someone slams their mouth onto mine and groans, that’s usually a kiss.”
“That wasn’t a kiss, Leina. That was a fucking confession.”
I freeze. Because oh.
Oh .
He leans back, just enough that I can see his face, the way his eyes flick over mine.
“I can’t have you, not the way I want. Not without losing everything.”
My breath catches on a burst of anger. “Then why did you start?”
He lets me go, angling his body away in the small space.
“Because I’m tired,” he rasps. “Because you were in my arms. Because for half a second, I let myself forget that I’m not allowed to have you. Not like that.”
He’s staring at some fixed point beyond the tent, like if he doesn’t look at me, he can pretend I’m not there. It shouldn’t hurt—I know the rules. No distractions .
I took the vows myself—forsaking my family and my past and my future. But it does. It does hurt. I don’t move; I don’t break the silence. Because I’m afraid if I do, I’ll beg.
But after a few minutes, he does.
“You’re shivering,” he mutters.
“I’m cold,” I say, defiantly, and wrap my arms tighter around myself.
He shifts slightly, repositioning us so that he’s holding me with my back to his chest again. He tries to make it more clinical, less intimate, as if he’s simply offering body heat to another warrior in need of shelter. But his breath stutters against my neck as I relax into his arms.
“You forgot the furs,” he scoffs, trying to break the tension.
Because I’m a coward, I let him. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”
“Not a chance.”
Despite everything—the cold, the exhaustion from the climb, the weight of this distance we’ve spent months building and we’ll spend years keeping—the corners of my mouth tug upward. His chin brushes the top of my head as he settles in.
As my eyelids begin to droop, another shiver of cold rips through me. Even wrapped in his arms, the brutal wind outside claws at our tent, dragging the heat from the air. Then—for a breath—it feels like something shimmers around us. The cold recedes, and our shared warmth thickens, soft and golden.
We don’t speak. I lie in the dark with him, wrapped in his arms, until our breaths sync and our bodies relax. I let myself enjoy it.
In the morning, we’ll need to pretend again.
But right now, in this moment between oaths and longing, I let myself be his.
And I let him be mine.