Chapter 11 Mance, Without Asset, Without Livid #2
I pull his face down again, and this time he responds immediately, his lips meeting mine and his hand trailing up my leg.
I get lost in the sensations, so happy to have him here that I give in to his kiss completely, melting beneath him, languishing in the way it feels for us to touch like this, despite all the things threatening to stand between us.
In this perfect moment, we feel inevitable.
Until a pointedly cleared throat makes us leap apart, breathing hard.
I sniff, annoyed. Exactly how many people are going to sneak into my room tonight? Who could possibly—
Oh, it’s me. Or, rather, Asset, crouching in the windowsill and looking us over with dry amusement.
“As much as I’m sure I’ll enjoy the memories of all that in a minute, might I suggest that this is perhaps not the time or place, and our focus should be on strategizing a way through this, rather than throwing all caution to the wind? ”
I pout. Asset is such a buzzkill. “Well, that was supposed to be your job,” I remind her. “Where have you even been? I haven’t seen you since yesterday afternoon.”
Her eyes are steely. “Find out.”
Unable to help myself, I give Silver one final, messy peck, and he grins at me, his mouth lopsided and his hair disheveled. His dimples on full display.
Then I pull Asset back in, expecting it to feel the way it’s always felt before. A quick merge, slightly painful and disorienting, but over quickly.
Only that isn’t how it goes at all.
I gasp, clawing at the sheets. Because pulling her back into me is like pulling a knife into my own chest.
“Whoa,” Silver says, reaching for me. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
I’m not. I’m dizzy. I feel ill, and yet I can’t respond to him. My body doesn’t feel like my own.
We’ve never been apart for this long before. We’ve never had such incredibly different experiences in the same day. It’s too much. Instead of our memories bumping into each other and melding, they collide. They war.
I see the thundering pyramid in the jungle, covered in guards with iridescent, skintight armor like mine.
Prime Tibits’s throne room, with heat rocks embedded into the walls to make an audience with him stifling and uncomfortable.
I feel sweat running down my neck as I hear Asset’s—my—arguments and his replies.
The words, “The alliance I made was with your father. Not with you.” And I feel the sick sensation of failure in Asset’s stomach as she leaves in defeat.
All this interspersed with the ride to the Forest Realm, the shock of these quarters, the kiss that I can still feel blazing through me.
It’s overwhelming.
And it hurts.
Eventually, I come to cradled against Silver’s chest, his arms gripping me tightly. His whole body is tense with concern, and I wonder how long I was out of it.
“You good?” he asks, and the rasp in his tone makes me think it may have been a very long time.
Gently, I push out of his embrace and get up, pacing the room unsteadily as it spins and lurches around me.
“What happened?” Silver asks, voice low.
“We have a plan,” I say, processing out loud.
“She’s trying to convince other realms to back us if we break the Treaty.
But the first one didn’t go so well. Prime Tibits.
He has always been our ally, so we thought it would be an easy place to start.
But . . . he thinks me weak. He doesn’t believe I have what it takes to achieve the military might my father offered him, so he won’t back me.
And he’s . . . not even wrong on that point.
We don’t want war. We were planning to reallocate those resources elsewhere. ”
“Others will support you,” Silver assures me. “Come back. Lie down. You’ve done enough for tonight. We’ll figure everything else out tomorrow when you’re better rested.”
I look at the bed—at him—with longing, but slowly shake my head. Unfortunately, my reason has returned and my mind has cleared.
So even though it pains me to say it, I say it anyway. “You can’t stay in this room, Silver.”
He stiffens, as though bracing for an attack. “Why not?”
I make my tone as gentle as I can. “Because this is a delicate situation and I’m not sure how Reltas will react.”
“I don’t care how Reltas reacts,” he shoots back through gritted teeth.
“You should. If I’m going to find a way out of this, then I need to get on his good side.
And that means playing nice. With him and .
. . with my father. Because they’re the only two with the power to break this agreement legally, and so far we don’t have a fallback.
We’re working on it. But for the moment . . . let’s not do anything risky. Okay?”
He looks like he wants to argue, but after a tense beat he bites back whatever he was planning to say and hangs his head. “If that’s . . . what you want.”
“It’s not,” I tell him. “What I want is you as close to me as possible. I swear. But, at least for right now . . . it’s what I need.”
He nods, his jaw flexing. “I get it. I do. I’ll leave your room. But I’m not going far.”
I cast a glance out the window. We’re three stories up, and there are no other buildings near. “Where are you going, then?”
Silver juts his chin at the shadowy boughs of the trees that surround us. “It wouldn’t be my first time sleeping in a bed of branches.”
I nod, accepting. Slightly relieved, even, although I try not to let that show.
He gets up and clasps my forearms, grip firm. “If anything happens, I can be here in seconds.”
I nod again, smiling sadly. “I’m glad.”
His grip loosens, and he sighs, pressing his forehead into mine. I can feel his breath across my lips. One small tilt and we’d be kissing again, pressed into each other and tangled together.
Instead, he drops my arms and steps back, and I resist the urge to stop him.
With a final, regretful grimace, he ducks back through the window, leaping onto a branch and running along its length until he reaches the trunk.
I fold my arms on the sill and watch him look for a halfway-comfortable spot against the bark.
When he finds one, he hunkers down, taking off his coat to use as a blanket. Then his eyes return to mine.
Something warm unfurls in my chest watching him prepare for an extremely uncomfortable night just so he can be near me. It’s a painful kind of happiness to know that he would do something like that for me.
I blow him a kiss. Then I take the time to rearrange my pillows so I can lie down directly in his line of sight. I think I see one side of his mouth lift in the darkness at the gesture.
After changing quickly in another corner of the room, I settle down, facing him, trying to find his eyes in the shadows.
He leans back against the trunk, his whole body angled toward me, and I can feel him looking back.
The night is still and quiet, but knowing that Silver is there, watching, feels intimate. At first, I wonder how I’ll ever sleep.
Eventually, though, the stress of the day—both mine and Asset’s—weighs me down, and my eyes flutter shut.
And even though my sleep is restless and unsettled, I don’t have nightmares.
Because I swear I can feel Silver’s watchful gaze even in my dreams.