Chapter 39 #2
Her gaze flicks between the tools, the slumber-roll I slept on alone, the small campfire I used to cook my last meal. The pile of carcasses I’ve been gutting, filling their cavities with a mixture of salt and herbs to keep them preserved until I make it back to Beluhn. Preferably with her.
Although she’s observing it, I’m certain she’s not seeing. Not as she continues to thrash and snarl.
“I know it’s tempting to disappear, to hide from it all, but you can’t take me there, Raeve.”
Some of the fight leaves her body. A crack in her armor.
The faintest glimmer of hope.
I push forward until my lips brush the shell of her ear, kneading all the fucking ache in my chest into a single sentence. “You can’t take me into the wild with you.”
Much as I’d love nothing more than to let go of everything but her … I can’t.
Should she not make it out of this; facing her daughter, telling Kyzari her mah lives but all that’s left of her is this— That’s my penance for missing so much. For not trusting in our love all those phases ago.
For not chasing her sooner.
I fill my lungs with her scent, close my eyes, and rest my forehead against her temple. “Come back to me, Raeve …”
My plea goes unanswered, making me wonder if that crack wasn’t in her armor at all. If my thirsty heart is sensing hope where there is none.
If I’m already too late.
So fucking close to being hers. To having the great honor of being able to sleep beside her, wake with her, prepare her meals for the rest of my daes. Being able to share our highs and lows and build a better world together. One worthy of her daughter.
So.
Fucking.
Close.
Yet so far away.
I clear my throat and let go, surprised to see she doesn’t move—heaving breath as she scans my camp with her cheek still pressed against the cliff.
More false hope.
I turn, moving for my clothes, each step akin to stripping one of the veins from my chest.
Silently, I beg the Creators that she doesn’t lunge at me again. It goes against the grain of my soul to turn from her—to say no to the female who rules over every bit of my being—but we can’t have each other like this.
I’d fall away with her. Fail this wounded world I pledged myself to care for through the shedding of too much blood. Fail her daughter.
There is no honor in that.
I fist my tunic, whip out the creases.
“Kaan …”
My lungs empty with a soft moan at the sound of my name on her lips, hoping with every hitched beat of my heart that I didn’t just imagine it.
I lift my chin, looking at her dragon feasting in the distance. “Yes, Moonbeam?”
There’s a stretch of silence that feels too fragile.
I turn to see she’s spun, now facing forward with her back to the cliff, arms appearing heavy at her sides, chin dropped. A submissive stance.
Vulnerable.
I yearn to see her eyes, but they’re cast in the darkness of her lashes as she looks down at the spring’s rippled surface, her lips twitching.
“Raeve …”
“I get it.”
The words are the slash of a claw.
“You—”
“What you were trying to tell me back at the village. It—” A pause, a swallow as she cracks her neck, then speaks past tight lips. “It … hurts.”
No two words ever sounded so awkward coming out. Like she tried to punch them into shape first, but they still arose squirming. Nor have two words ever relieved me of so much weight, my breaths coming easier, lighter than the last.
Hope …
For her, I’m so easily the fool.
“I’m sorry, Moonbeam.” I reach back to set my tunic on the edge. “I suspected this part of the process might be … difficult for you this time. You’ve been through much since you tamed Slátra.”
She flinches like I just struck her, cracks her neck again, hands balling into fists.
Like just the mention of her fallen Moonplume has her preparing to battle something, leading me to wonder if bonding with Líri has shed light on the wound left from Slátra’s passing.
If that’s the reason she’s struggling through this.
Hungry, isolating grief.
The strongest opponent I’ve ever encountered.
“Raeve … The bond hasn’t settled yet, has it?”
A slight shake of her head floods me with relief. Hits my heart with another strike of hope.
I nod, certain it’ll harden soon. I know of a male who took seven cycles to settle into his bond with a particularly boisterous Sabersythe—basically unheard of—and she’s been out here for almost five.
“If you completely abandon the tender side of your nature, it’s gone. There’s no retrieving—”
“It was gone,” she grits through clenched teeth. “She just spat it back out at me like a loose tooth.”
“Who? Líri?”
Raeve shakes her head, and my heart slams through its next beat.
I think back to the moment I pinned her beneath me in Bothaim, Rygun stretching my skin as we looked into pupils that reminded me of the sky in The Shade. As I grew almost certain I felt the presence of something … other staring back at me.
I’m almost scared to ask the question pressing on my chest.
“What do you mean?”
She takes me in from beneath heavy lashes. Although there’s still very little color around her pupils, I’m relieved to see the ring is thicker. “Doesn’t matter.”
I beg to differ. But if I’ve learned anything since I first laid eyes on her after all these phases of thinking she was gone from this world, it’s that it’s best to choose my battles. Or get stabbed to almost-death by her words.
“Grief walks hand in hand with love,” I say with my entire chest. “I know it’s tempting to cut away the pain, but that rib-cracking ache is proof that something good came first. Something worth remembering.”
“I didn’t come over here for a lecture.”
“I know what you came here for, Moonbeam. I’m the one who dangled the bait.”
Her cheeks redden, like she’s embarrassed at being so predictable. Little does she know, being desired by her is the greatest compliment I’ll ever receive.
“Though you hide it well, your heart is boundless. And your love has the power to shape worlds. But not if you keep finding ways to run from the things that make you feel.”
Her eyes flare. “Fuck you.”
“Any time. Any place. Any lifetime.” I crack a half smile. “So long as you’re not fucking me as a means of saying goodbye, I’m yours to defile as you see fit.”
A deeper flush stains her cheeks, and her bottom lip tucks between her teeth. An innocent taunt that wreaks havoc on my self-control.
“So what’s it to be?” Her chin lifts to meet the challenge in my voice, like she suspects my next words before I loosen them. “Are you staying, or are you going to bow out from this fight?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she pledges with such gusto I trust her intent. Four words that sew a stitch through the rip that’s been plaguing my heart since I returned to Dhomm to find her gone. To find my málmr on my pillow—discarded.
Unwanted.
“It’ll hurt.” I prowl through the steaming water. “Are you sure you’re strong enough?”
Her brows pinch, eyes narrowed with stark offense.
She puffs her chest as I move into her atmosphere. A silent challenge that heats my blood. “I hate you sometimes.”
No you don’t, Moonbeam.
“And I love you every moment.”
Her breath hitches.
Another crack in her defenses.
I thread my hand around the back of her head, tilting her until my lips graze her temple. Just firm enough I’m able to feel the flutter of her pulse—my next words a whispered secret. “Even when it hurts.”
She stiffens.
I step so close that every breath is a battle for the limited space between us. “Even when you’re throwing barbs, or using me to distract from the shit you’re hiding from—”
She snatches my wrist so fast I don’t register the motion until she’s pulled back, looking up at me through crisp eyes. Such a bold, beautiful blue that it’s an effort not to fall to my knees.
“Incorrect,” she seethes.
“Elaborate.”
“You’re not a distraction.”
The chill moving up my spine tells me Líri’s attention just lifted from her meal and is now—very intently—dragging across my back. Assessing the situation.
I arch a brow, heart thundering. “Then what am I, Moonbeam?”
Her lips peel from her teeth, making way for a single snarled word that explodes the aching organ in my chest.
“Mine.”