Chapter 8 #2
“Your hands are empty,” he said. “I suppose you’ve abandoned the idea of killing me.”
I blinked, then realized he meant the knife. It was gone. Somewhere on the floor, forgotten in the wreckage of my panic.
“I still have every intention of killing you,” I muttered.
His gaze flicked to my mouth when I said it.
“You’re shaking,” Valen said.
“I’m not.”
His eyes lowered, not to my body, not to the ruined table, but to my fingers. The way they curled, the way they betrayed me.
“You are,” he said simply. “Stop lying about it.”
“What do you really want, Valen?” I asked. “And don’t give me that lie about it being me. We’ve done this before, and the lie is always the same.”
I let out a breath that sounded a little too much like a laugh. “Every time I ask, you answer like you’re above it. Like wanting me is some inevitable tragedy you were cursed with.” My eyes locked on his. “So I’ll ask again.”
I stepped closer, voice low and mean. “What do you want that you won’t just take like everything else?”
Valen’s mouth tipped, barely. Like he’d been asking himself the same question since that fateful day in the crypts.
He didn’t answer me. Instead, he reached out and caught my wrist. It was like he was stopping a reflex, not restraining a prisoner.
My breath stuttered anyway, old instinct clawing up my spine.
Valen’s eyes narrowed at the sound, like it irritated him that my body still reacted like I’d been trained to expect pain.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.
I stared at him. “That’s hilarious.”
He didn’t even blink.
“No,” he corrected. “It’s inconvenient.”
I tried to pull my wrist back. He let me, but only an inch. A reminder that he was allowing movement, not losing control of it.
“You’re not afraid of me,” Valen murmured.
I scoffed. “I’m terrified of you.”
His gaze dipped, caught the lie like a thread out of place.
“No,” he said. “You’re afraid of what you’ll do if you stop being terrified.”
That hit like a slap.
I swallowed, my throat burning.
“I hate you,” I said.
Valen’s thumb shifted once against my wrist, barely there.
“I know,” he replied. “You hate anything that sees you clearly.”
I hissed. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Talk like you know me.”
Valen’s eyes held mine, unblinking.
“I know enough,” he said. “I know you were a handmaiden exiled to the crypts because you were useful and disposable. I know you were an orphan with no family name to shield you, no one powerful enough to come looking when you disappeared. I know what it feels like to be small in a world that only respects crowns and cruelty.”
“I know you felt powerless when I turned your home to ash. I know you carry the grief of the woman I killed like a pack you can’t set down.
I know you starved in the dark and still kept going.
I know you stood in Icespire and did what the queen demanded because you wanted to live.
I know you knelt in Emberfall and wore obedience like armor for a man who did not deserve your loyalty, your softness, or your name. ”
He stepped even closer, voice lowering.
“I have watched you. I have hated how you pull my attention like a hook under my ribs. And I know this too, Elara.” His eyes flicked to my mouth. “Every time I touch you, every time I kiss you, you fight me. And your body still answers me anyway.”
His mouth curved, faint and dangerous.
“Even when you swear you won’t, Frostbite.”
For a second, I couldn’t breathe.
Not because it was poetic.
Because it was true.
And he wasn’t saying it to be kind. He was saying it like an accusation. Like he was angry at the world for making me like this.
Or worse.
Like he was angry at himself for noticing.
I thought of the crypts, of frost and silence and the only hands I had trusted there. I thought of Rhydian’s laugh, of Aeliana’s cold, honest eyes.
I thought of everything I’d lost.
I shoved him with everything I had left. I wanted to hate him so thoroughly my bones would crack. I wanted to carve out the part of me that answered to his closeness.
Instead, my hands—traitorous, traitorous—found his shoulders. Not to push him away. Not yet.
I had thought the worst part would be fear.
It wasn’t.
It was the shame that rose in a slow, choking tide—salt on my tongue, iron in my throat. Because my body had moved before my mind. Because my fingers curled in leather and muscle that should have been the edge of an enemy, not a place to hold.
His mouth descended. His kiss was a searing, certain punctuation that turned thought to vapor.
It wasn’t the dare he’d offered in front of his enemies, tongue to tongue on a blade’s edge, a cruelty disguised as a kiss.
This was different. Real and ravenous. A question asked and answered in the same breath.
My mouth hit his hard enough that our teeth clicked, the impact shocking. Heat flared instantly. His lips were warm and unyielding, parted just enough that my breath slipped into him before I could stop it.
Then his hand came up, fingers catching in my hair at the nape of my neck, anchoring me. His mouth shifted, deliberate now, his teeth grazing my lower lip before his tongue swept in, slow and testing, as if he were measuring how far I’d let this go.
The intrusion sent a jolt through me, unwelcome and undeniable.
I bit back.
Not hard enough to draw blood. Hard enough to make a point.
His breath hitched, just once, before his tongue pushed deeper, claiming the space I’d opened, teeth scraping mine in a rough, unpolished rhythm that felt more like a challenge than a kiss.
Heat coiled low in my chest, infuriating and electric, every nerve suddenly aware of how close he was, how easily he held me there without force.
I should have pulled away.
Instead, I met him, tongue to tongue, breath to breath. The room narrowed to pressure and skin and the impossible, humiliating relief of being held by the man who had ruined me.
Aeliana’s smile flashed behind my eyes, bright and gone. My best friend on a sunless balcony in Icespire, tearing bread in half and giving me the larger piece without looking.
He killed her. He killed her. He killed her.
I broke first.
He let me.
Air rushed back in. The space between us was a wound, hot edges, cold center. His breath shook once against my cheek, then evened.
My lips throbbed. My palms ached where I had clutched him.
He didn’t step back.
“I don’t want this,” I lied. “You murdered my best friend.”
The words landed between us, heavy and final.
“And you still kissed me,” he said.
“I will never forgive you,” I shouted.
His gaze held mine, molten and unyielding.
“I didn’t ask you to.”
He reached up and—ancestors help me—touched the corner of my lower lip with his thumb, slow enough I could have stopped him, slow enough to make the choice mine. But I didn’t move.
The shame didn’t ebb. It changed shape, braided itself with something worse: a thin thread of relief that someone else bore the heat when I couldn’t.
“When the time comes, you’ll decide who you are, Frostbite.”
“And do you think I am someone who will love a murderer?” I asked, and it wasn’t bravado. It was a bruise I pressed with my own finger to feel how deep it went.
His answer was a breath against my cheek, hot and patient. “Right now?” His gaze dipped to my mouth, to the place his touch had just claimed and I had let it. “No.”
The word should have been victory. It wasn’t.
“But I will wait,” he said, so quiet it made the hall seem louder. “Until you do.”