Chapter 9
Reyla
Ithought I’d died and that the fates had bound me because I’d failed Lore.
Myself.
Instead, he’d come for me. He took me into his arms, and he showed me the way home.
Lore flitted us from the bed to our bathing chamber. The thick smell of soap wrapped around me, warm and familiar. I stood still, swaying until my knees remembered how to hold me up.
His arm tightened around me without a word.
The light was softer here, a gentle gold filtering in through the windows. I leaned into him, pressing my face into his neck. His heartbeat thudded, and I clung to that rhythm, to him, without shame or questions.
As he undressed me, his fingers moved with such care I couldn’t look up at him. He slipped each piece from me like they’d rip in his hands. Or I'd rip. I didn’t know how I remained standing.
He didn’t ask me to.
One wave from his hand, and water rose in the tub. Another twitch of his fingers, and the candles scattered on every crevice lit, casting a thousand flickers over us.
I began to breathe again.
A curve of his lips, and he was as naked as me.
“You could've done that for me,” I said with a limp smile that I felt more than I could show.
“And miss removing one item off you after another?” His smile also didn't quite reach his eyes. We'd been scorched, and we were both still singed. “I'd never miss the chance. Do you know how many times I imagined stripping off your clothing, laying you on my bed, and following?”
“One or two times?”
“Or three.”
My smile crooked up a bit farther, though it still felt jagged.
He lifted me into his arms and stepped into the tub, slowly lowering me onto his lap.
The water welcomed me like the best embrace, and his arms remaining snug around me was even better.
I slid my legs around his waist, nestling my thighs against his, pressing my forehead into his chest. Breathing him in.
He barely made a sound, just a light, stuttering sigh I felt all the way to my bones.
Warmth moved through me. I tried to speak but couldn’t. Resting my cheek against his chest helped more than anything. He was all stormy sky and home. I breathed against the soft place where his pulse beat hard under his skin. His breath caught, and he kissed the top of my head.
“I thought it was over,” I whispered, though maybe I spoke only in my head.
“Never, as long as I still live.” He smoothed his hand down my spine. My ribs stopped shaking.
“How long left?”
“Six days. Plenty of time.”
The relief I felt…it stung in the back of my eyes and made my throat choke tight.
I trailed my fingers up to his jaw. “Yes, plenty of time.” It would be enough. This I vowed. “You smell like rain.” My voice came out cracked and too small.
“You smell like you're still with me.”
And just like that, I realized I hadn’t been. Not really. Not until now.
“I wasn’t only chained,” I said, my face buried once again in the crook of his neck.
He stilled, listening with everything in him.
“I was unraveling.” I clung to his shoulders.
“Memories kept overwhelming me. Some weren’t even mine, I think.
And the ones that were—” A shudder ripped through me.
“They were frozen. Like the most jagged parts of me had wormed their way to the surface and carved themselves into my skin. I screamed. Over and over. But I couldn’t hear the sound. ”
Lore stroked the base of my spine.
“I pretended you were there. That your voice could still reach me.” My eyes ached to seep, but no tears fell. “You kept me together, Lore. Even if you weren’t there at the time.”
Gently lifting my chin, he kissed my forehead.
“You gave my hope back to me,” I said.
“It's always been yours.”
I shook my head. “It's always been ours.”
He nodded, his lips curling up on one corner.
“There, nothing felt rational. I was afraid hope was a lie, but I knew you'd never give up. Through it all, your love protected me. It gave me a shield to fight off the pain.” My hands shook now. “I would still do it again if it meant you lived.”
“Wildfire—”
“I would.” My words came out stronger this time. “For you? I'd die this instant.”
He tightened his arms around my waist and tilted my face toward his.
“No.” He said it so gently it hurt. “Don't say that. I want to bear it all for you. Every torturous memory. Every scream. I swear, I felt you breaking. I felt your soul tear.” His eyes held mine, daring me to look away.
“I’ll carry it. All of it. For both of us.
I'd give anything for you to unsee what you endured.”
He lifted a cup and trickled hot water over my shoulders. Down my back, soothing me with the heat and the loving touch of his hands. When my hair was wet, he worked lather through the strands so gently, it made me want to cry. Then he rinsed.
“I held you in our bed,” he said after my hair was clean.
“And you weren’t moving. You weren’t there.
” His voice rasped like it hadn’t been used in days.
“When you fell, I thought you were dead.
I started dying as well. I would've laid down beside you and let the curse take me, but the dragon that helped me inside the labyrinth came. It’d saved me there, and I begged it to save you.
I told it I'd give anything if it healed you.”
“What happened?”
He lifted his arm, and my breath caught as I stared at the gorgeous dragon tattoo.
“This happened. It flared, hot silver, and tendrils of light shot through my chest. The dragon did it somehow.
It lowered its snout and touched you, and a pulse like a thousand heartbeats erupted from inside the beast. The physical injury Prager gave you with magic knitted together, but you didn't wake up.”
I ran a fingertip across the pattern.
“The dragon spoke in my head, saying that you'd saved me and now I must save you. I would've given anything to bring you back, Wildfire. Still would.”
We were the same, eager to sacrifice ourselves for the other.
“The dragon said you were locked in shadow and pain, that your spirit slept, and was mortally wounded.”
“It was right. I felt the best parts of me slowly leaching away.”
“I asked it how to heal you, and it told me to enter your shadow, that only a true soul mate could save you, that I needed to fuse shadow and love together. It told me to ask Valera for clues, and it was right. She had a book about dreamcraft chains, and I was able to use it to find you, to bring you back.”
“To heal me.”
He drew in a breath, and when it came out, it trembled.
“I screamed into fate’s mouth, and it heard me.
” His hands fisted along my spine, but I sensed despair, not anger in this man I loved more than any other.
“I thought I'd lost you. And some part of me…” He shook his head. “A part of me was dying with you.”
I stroked his face. “Lore. Love.”
He kissed my palm. “Even when I didn't know if you could hear me, I still spoke. I told you everything. Who we are, what you mean to me. You’re my life. My only love.”
“You came for me.” My voice caught. “You brought me back. And now I’m here with you. I’m not going anywhere, Lore.”
A shudder ripped through him.
“What happened to Prager?” My hands stilled against his chest.
He sighed. “Dorion and I hit her hard with magic, and I know she was badly hurt, but she got away.”
Of course she did. My jaw tightened. Ice dragged down my spine, but I didn’t let it claim me. “She won’t next time.”
“No,” he said quietly. “She won’t.”
Neither of us said more. We didn’t need to. She'd intruded into our lives enough.
I lifted the soap and lathered it between my hands, letting it float while I crafted sudsy circles on his chest and abdomen, my fingers pausing on the place where a borgon had tried to kill him.
I washed his hair, rinsing it while he stroked my spine with so much care I could barely breathe. When we were both clean, I closed my eyes and nestled into him.
No pretending. No masks. Just us.
Opening my eyes, I stroked his face, running my fingertip along the scar where Prager had tried to burn hope out of him.
I’d touched him a thousand times before in daylight and on restless nights, during sweetness and ache. But never like this. Never to remember him alive.
Inside me, something softened. I wasn’t bracing myself, and I wasn’t hiding. For the first time since I was lost in that cursed realm, I could let the love and joy flare inside me.
I ran my palms along his back, pausing at the scar above his ass cheek that I'd teased him about what felt like ages ago.
He lifted a cup and poured warm water over me, rinsing away foam and fear alike. The stream drifted between us in silence, and I felt like we were cradling a nyxin pup too small to survive if we didn't hold it tight in our hands.
He kissed my temple.
“You undo me,” he whispered, “and then you pull me back together.”
I cupped his face. His warm breath drifted across my skin. And I kissed him. Slow. Deep. Showing him I was still his and that he was still mine. His love had stitched me back into place even when I’d tried to disappear into the shadows.
Our kisses weren’t desperate. We’d been buried together and crawled out of the ground hand-in-hand.
“Show me we’re alive,” I breathed.
“Yes.”
Water lapped around us as I shifted closer, pressing my chest against his. The warmth of his skin sent shivers through me that had nothing to do with temperature. My palms found his shoulders, and I traced the muscles that had carried so much weight while I was lost.
“I need to feel you,” I whispered against his neck. “Need to know this is real.”
His breath caught. “Wildfire…”
“Please.” The word broke from somewhere deep. “I need you to help me remember what it feels like to be whole.”
His gentle hands cupped my face, tilting it until our eyes met. The love there was so fierce it made my throat close. “Whatever you need. Always whatever you need.”