46. Chapter 46 #2
His eyes found mine in the darkness like I was the only light in the room.
"I don't care if you hate me." His words came rough and urgent. "Hate me for the rest of our lives. But not for something I didn't choose." His voice was hoarse.
I shook my head. Couldn't speak. Couldn't do anything but move—I ran to him before my pride could catch up.
My vision blurred with unshed tears. My knees were about to give out with the weight of it all and I didn't care because he was right there and I was so tired of being the girl who didn't get to fall.
I leapt into his arms hard enough to knock him back a step. My arms locked around his neck and my face buried itself in his chest and a sob burst out of me that I'd been holding in for weeks. Months. Years, maybe.
He wrapped his arms around me. Tight. One hand cradling the back of my head, the other banded across my waist, pulling me into him like he was trying to fit me inside his ribcage where nothing could reach me.
I held on. Just this. Just him. Just one breath of being someone who got to be held.
His chin settled on top of my head. His chest expanded against mine—one slow, shuddering inhale. The tether vibrated with our newfound peace, filling every crack I'd been bleeding from.
Stay, the bond whispered. Stay, stay, stay.
I closed my eyes. Let myself have five more heartbeats.
The air between us thickened. Then heated.
I only got three.
The water in the vase hissed—steam rising from the surface like something was boiling it from within. The flowers drooped, their petals curling from sudden heat.
Then the shadows.
They stretched toward him. Toward us. The darkness in the corners of my room reached like iron filings snapping toward a magnet. They pooled at his feet and crept up the walls, spreading toward the space where we stood.
The air pressure dropped. My ears popped. His grip on me tightened. The candle on my nightstand guttered and flared, its flame bending sideways, reaching for him.
No.
Nuclear heat built inside me. The same force that had crystallized soldiers in the forest, that had left glassed earth and impossible flowers in our wake.
This is what we do. This is what we are.
I looked at the boiling water.
I pulled back and looked at him.
Poets call love a spark. Idiots. A spark lights a hearth. This was the flash before a detonation.
"In the garden," I said. My voice came out strange. Distant. "Your magic with her grew roses."
He flinched.
"Your magic with me boils water. Crystallizes corpses."
I thought of the warmth and healing on the ridge. The golden liquid feeling of his Mark healing my exhaustion. An anomaly, he’d called it. A mistake. This—destruction—was the truth.
"Amaria—"
"She heals things." I pushed off him and took a step back. Then another. The shadows stretched further, reaching, grasping. "I destroy them. That's the difference. That will always be the difference."
"Those roses mean nothing." He stepped forward. The shadows stretched toward him and he didn't stop. "She heals the surface. You heal the parts of me I thought were dead."
Something broke loose inside me. But I couldn’t let it run free.
"If I let you cross this—if I let you in..." My back hit the wall. "If we—if we give in. We’d take the roof off this palace."
He stared at me. The desperation and grief etched into his face.
"I know," he said quietly. "I've known since the first time I touched you. And I don't care."
So, he wasn't blind. He was suicidal.
"Then you know why you need to leave."
"I can't." His voice cracked. "I can't just stand there and watch you—"
"Watch me what?" The words came out sharp. Bitter. "Watch me be the dirty secret? The rebel whore warming your bed while you marry your princess and heal the kingdom?"
He recoiled like I'd struck him.
"Don't." The word came out in a snarl. "Don't you dare reduce yourself to that. You are not a secret. You are not a transaction. You are the only thing in this kingdom I would burn it all down to keep."
I reared back. He meant it. That was the terror of it.
He wasn't offering me a throne. He was offering me a funeral pyre with a view.
He was looking at the end of the world and calling it a fair trade.
And god help me, the part of my soul that had been starving for a lifetime wanted to climb onto the pyre beside him.
"Go back to your room, Eryndor." I grabbed the door. The wood was warm under my palm—too warm, heat seeping from wherever our bond touched reality. "Go back to your perfect bride and your perfect future and leave me the hell alone."
"Amaria—"
I slammed the door in his face.
The lock clicked into place.
I leaned my forehead against the wood, shaking, and fighting for every inhale. On the other side, I heard him—felt him—standing motionless in the hallway.
Go, I thought. Please. Before I change my mind.
The shadows in my room had settled. The candle flame burned straight again. The nuclear pressure was fading, fading away into the walls, into the distance I'd just forced between us.