The Minor Fall

CHAPTER 46 Something Stupid

CHAPTER 46

Something Stupid

I glanced across the club at Bryn, at the smooth, expressionless face under the bar lights that seemed completely unaware it was New Year’s Eve.

The disco shirt Kazie had forced him into was pale pink, close cut, and highlighted the lean, muscled lines he usually kept hidden. He’d allowed himself to undo exactly one button, which was as casual as I’d seen him since the music room.

I swallowed my chilled stout without thinking.

Years ago, Bryn had walked up to the Gate—before the cane, before the Inquitate had ever attacked him—not to see the memories, but to join them. Because if he’d waited for the memories to end and made the Fall, he would be reborn into a world without Nereida.

Had Bryn wanted that fate for me?

What had he seen when I’d arrived in Oslo—Nereida? The potential of her? Or the woman he’d played the piano for in L’Ardoise?

“Roe, are ye alright?”

I offered James a smile that slid across my face like oil. “Yeah, fine. Just thinking about Kazie.” I rolled my shoulders in the rainbow-hued blouse she’d picked for me. I’d thankfully vetoed the sequined dress, but I hadn’t expected the jeans to be this tight and unforgiving.

James had put up only a token protest before donning the flowery blouse he now wore, unbuttoned at the collar, where he’d stuck his glasses at Kazie’s suggestion. He looked good with his hair styled with a messy gel, and dark brandy eyes.

“Ye want to talk about it?” he pressed. “About Kazie making the Fall?”

What was there to say? She’d heard the call and now in a few weeks would be gone. No body. No nothing. Not even a memory for those who weren’t Ruhaven.

But she was making the most of her “going-away party.”

Beneath the hot spotlights, her sequins glittered under the disco ball, sweat beaded on her bare neck, and the scrappy dress showed off her deep-lavender skin. If my car had been iced over in L’Ardoise, I could have broken it with the back of her strappy heels. But no one would suspect her impending demise was around the corner.

Despite the threat of the Inquitate, Tye had not joined us for New Year’s. James had thrown a fit, but Tye refused to leave Naruka, saying only that if we had the right to throw our lives to the Gate, then he had a right to take his chances tonight.

I leaned over the sticky bar table. “James, do you think Tye is right? Maybe we shouldn’t go back, maybe this is wrong.” And god, how I wanted to ask him about Bryn too. If anyone knew the truth, it’d be James. Which was exactly why I didn’t ask.

“Why give us the memories, so? I’ve a mind to believe, as me mother did, that we were right to go back.”

“But you won’t.”

James drank deeply from his pint before answering. “No, I won’t.” He fumbled for a cigarette, the bar already so full of smoke I didn’t know where the cigarettes ended and the fog machine began.

“So that’s it then. She’s going to walk up there and let the Gate take her. She’ll be another plaque.”

“Ye make it sound as if it’s not hard for me, but yer wrong,” James stated, the smoke vibrating between his two fingers. “It’s not easy watching ye all leave, to know I’ll stay, to know I’ll never see Ruhaven. And worse, to know that when the memories end for meself, what becomes of that world I’ll only hear of from others.”

I hadn’t thought of that, and the reality of it drove a wedge right under my heart.

“James, I…”

“Ye know, I don’t want to have to say goodbye to ye, to any of ye. And Roe, especially not to yerself.” He looked up over a half-empty pint glass, eyes misty. “Don’t ye think I wasn’t happy to find me sister. I’ve been watching ye in the Gate for years, ye know. Grew up with ye as I did Essie. I’m very glad I got to meet ye here. And if ye do make the Fall, Roe, I’ll miss ye.”

I squeezed his hand. “James, I won’t be leaving, so don’t worry. You’ll be stuck with me for a while yet.”

What would James say if I told him Bryn wanted me to make the Fall for Nereida? Would he even see anything wrong with that? Maybe not. James would have done the same thing with Essie, wouldn’t he? Walk hand-in-hand to the Gate one day to be reborn in Ruhaven and to hell with whoever they might have been here?

Kazie tucked a sweaty arm around my waist. “Aw, Roe,” she slurred. “I don’t want to end on what Tye said.” She dragged a stool between James and me, her dress glittering in the busy club.

I swirled a finger in the sweat of my pint glass. What did I say to someone who thought they’d disappear in a few weeks? What did a person do before they expected to die?

“Are you—I don’t know—going to see your parents?”

“They’re dead, Roe.” There was no inflection to her voice. “My life is here now, and soon, I’ll start again.”

“And you’re ready to lose who you are?”

“No, I’m ready to be who I am.” She tilted her mane of curls. “You’re just letting Tye get to you. I’ve seen people take a lot bigger risks for a lot less. And sometimes, Roe,” she paused and flicked a blueberry earring, “sometimes I’m just tired. We’re all so busy chasing something that exists less than a dream ever did.”

“And what’s that?”

She grabbed James’s pint with sparkly fingers and dragged it across the table. I didn’t know if she realized it was empty or just needed something to hang on to. “I wish we’d talked more, Roe. But we’ll have time after you make the Fall.”

“I won’t. What is it you’re chasing, Kazie?”

She toasted me. “Magic.”

“Well…”

“You know I practically lived at this library in Malawi,” she began, “when I was a kid, and even after Bryn found me, I still had about ten books checked out. I think, living in those books, I think it was the happiest time of my life until I found Ruhaven. I used to think they were all real.” She blinked her thick eyelashes at me. “One day I thought, who decided they weren’t?”

Because life was real and the imagination wasn’t? “And you think the answer is Ruhaven?”

“I know it is. I’ve always known. I feel it here .” She pushed two fingers into the sequins over her breasts. “A longing, so bad it’s a bruise on my heart. Do you understand that, Roe? Have you ever wanted anything so badly?”

Yes. Yes, I wanted Willow back so much it hurt every morning. “Yeah.”

“It’s so bad it gives me anxiety to be away from the Gate this long, because I’m worried it won’t let me back every time I’m away, you know?”

That wasn’t how I felt, though. Did Bryn?

“Tye said there’s nothing of us to be reborn,” I recalled. “You’re giving your life away to a person who won’t remember—or ever know—who Kazie was.”

She lifted a brow and tapped her heart. “Did you forget O’Sahnazekiel?”

I stole a glance at Bryn, found his eyes still on mine. Swallowed. “No. No, I suppose not.”

“I’ve been in love with Ruhaven since I stepped through that Gate. No one is going to stop me from going back. And I know it’s what we’re meant to do, else why write the Ledger ?”

I was silent a moment. Why indeed? Not even Bryn had an answer for that.

Kazie grabbed James’s cigarette from him over his protests, wedged it between her lips. “I want more than this world. More than the work and the little things we buy to pretend we’re alive. I want the magic of the thing.” She tapped the burning smoke to her bodice. “If you don’t feel that, Roe, don’t make the Fall.”

B ryn could at least pretend to stumble with the cane. But in dancing, like everything, he was unnaturally talented.

Smoke and sweat flashed under disco lights when Bryn spun me in a quick circle, his cane a helpful prop. Unfortunately, a handful of bolts tossed into the air would have landed with better rhythm than me.

What would I do if he asked me to make the Fall? He’d wanted Nereida. Impossibly more than I had loved anyone or anything. Except Willow.

What if it’d been me looking not for O’Sahnazekiel, but Willow? And what if the one person standing between me and her was Bryn? Would I sacrifice him?

The space between us grew heavier, shorter, weighed with a history I couldn’t understand—a history that had driven him to walk to the Gate and sacrifice his own life for a chance to be with a memory. And if Tye and James hadn’t intervened, I’d have never heard the careful cadence of his words, never felt the collision of us when I walked into his office in Oslo, or listened to the colorful tales he spun of his hometown.

I’d never have known what it was to be held by someone who made my entire being vibrate like a struck piano, to feel that connection stretch across time, wind its way through a memory of another woman, and find a place in me.

How badly I wanted to be the woman Bryn waited for. Wanted to be worth waiting for.

He caught me around the waist when I tripped over his cane. “Rowan,” he said in my ear, “you are shockingly uncoordinated for a woman who regularly climbs onto our roof.”

“Before you get too cocky,” I warned as he spun me, “remember you almost took down Naruka installing a shelf.”

Bryn smiled widely, shifted, and pressed his teeth lightly to my neck. “How was I to know it was a load-bearing wall, my ever-so-talented Rowan?”

Laughing, I shivered in the smoky heat, Bryn’s gentle pressure on my hand pulling me forward a step. One. Two. “Keep your eyes on me,” he mouthed before asking for a turn. “You may find you will spin on a more relatively straight line. And I enjoy looking at you.”

“Looking at me? Or watching my toes tie themselves in knots?”

He flattened my chest against his. “Both are highly enjoyable.” His irises flashed gold, then died to blue.

Before I could worry about the locals seeing that bit of magic, I fell into his rhythm, spinning clumsily with my eyes on him like a sailor finding her lighthouse. Bryn’s rare panting laughter zinged along my bones as he asked me to step in a bizarre pattern that confused my brain as much as my feet. Twice I kicked his cane, which echoed a bass line like a stomping foot. But through all the turns, spins, and missed side-steps, I locked my gaze on the rare, bright smile that belonged to O’Sahnazekiel.

He switched his grip, sliding his thigh between my legs as his hands landed on my hips, the air between us already going taut as his breath quickened in time with mine. Coolness blossomed on my neck when Bryn swept aside my loose hair.

His lips brushed my ear. “Rowan.”

Yes, Bryn?

He smiled against me, rocking us in a slow back and forth. “Do you think of me when we are in the Gate?” His voice dropped an octave.

“In the Gate?”

“When you are with O’Sahnazekiel,” he murmured. “Do you imagine it is me? Watching you?”

Everyone in this pub must be hearing my pulse skyrocket right now. “Why are you asking?”

“Perhaps because I wonder if you prefer ‘feathered demons,’ as you once described him,” he said with a sideways smile, “or me.”

He was teasing me, I knew it, but I answered anyway. “You, Bryn.”

He pulled me against him, hard, skimmed his nose along my jaw. “If we do not stop, my eyes shall soon attract the attention of every patron of this pub.” He wasn’t wrong, they were sparking under his lashes even now, but I wanted every piece of him he was willing to part with.

I lifted my mouth to his ear. “I don’t care.”

His gentle intake of breath was just barely audible. “Do you not?” He murmured, voice no longer steady. “Then tell me, my Rowan, when we wake from the Gate, do you wish I would touch you as O’Sahnazekiel does?”

I curled my fingers into his shirt. “ Yes .”

He breathed against my neck, skimming the tip of his nose along the pulse beating rapidly there. When I met his eyes, they were a deep, gleaming gold.

“What do you wish to do?” he asked softly.

What did I want to do?

I wanted to get the first taxi home and peel his clothes from each lean muscle like I should have done instead of leaving him half-naked at the Gate. I wanted to pick up exactly where we left off on the piano. And mostly, I wanted to finally know Bryn.

“I’ll tell James we’re leaving.”

I cranked open the window of the overheated cab. How fast would I extinguish that gold if I hung my head out?

Probably pretty fast.

Hey .

I turned and caught Bryn’s teasing grin, though his eyes remained closed. With his left hand, he drew tiny circles on my knee until I wondered if I had some erogenous area there I didn’t know about.

The cabbie, oblivious to the state of his passengers, continued his one-man conversation. “Did ye want the heater on, love? It’s quite cold out there so it is.”

If this car rose even a single degree right now, steam might shoot out my ears.

“I think we are quite fine, thank you,” Bryn answered, keeping his eyelids shut tight.

But as the car climbed up the Kerry mountain, it wasn’t just Bryn’s thumb on my knee that had me heating up.

Bryn had been sleeping with Nereida for what— Six? Seven years? —and if he was like James, he hadn’t been with anyone else since then.

That meant for the last six years, the only woman Bryn had been with was Nereida, and I happened to know she was much better at the whole thing than me.

I stole a glance at Bryn.

He rested against the back seat of the taxi with his eyelids closed, appearing entirely at peace other than the bronze leaking from under his thick eyelashes.

No, don’t look at him. That had been a mistake—the man was indecently good-looking, which wasn’t helping things. But still, I— Jesus Christ, was this window broken ? I needed air.

I dragged it down a smoker’s two inches before the cabbie gave me such a hard look that I wound it up again.

Bryn’s thumb stopped its circling. The back seat softened as he leaned into me, his cool breath brushing my ear a second before his voice. “Rowan, we do not need to do this now. If you prefer to wait.”

You’re not reading my thoughts or something?

No indeed, Rowan, but I know when you are nervous.

Nervous —what else could I possibly feel? He’d sacrificed himself at the Gate just for the chance to be with Nereida when he’d thought I wasn’t in the Ledger . And now? Well, it didn’t make any sense—but some part of me felt like I needed to justify that.

Bryn gripped my hand as the car bumped up Naruka’s drive. The dim light flickering in his bedroom window only heightened my nerves. He handed the cabbie a twenty— keep the change —before I could wiggle my fingers into my glued-on jeans.

As I helped him out of the taxi, he popped open the umbrella for us both, draping an arm across my shoulders as the rain thundered on our canopy.

Wheels crunched gravel, and then we were alone.

Together, we limped to the tack room, each step causing my heart to tango with a trapped bumblebee.

It’d taken me five minutes just to untie my boots that day in Bryn’s room. He might have some fancy Norwegian buttons I’d get tangled over while his arousal leaked out his ears. He’d be praying for Nereida in the Gate before long.

I was jumpy by the time we ducked under the overhang where the rain thundered like wooden spoons smashing tin pots.

Click.

I turned when Bryn unlatched the door.

My knees buckled at the twin eyes of golden desire burning in the night. “Your eyes are still gold.”

He cradled my jaw, slid his thumb over my mouth, between my lips. “What do you wish to do about it, Rowan?” His voice was gravel.

Oh, to hell with it.

I slapped the unlocked door at his back and shoved us through.

We tumbled into the kitchen. I’d probably end up injuring Bryn before we ever got to the bed, but he steadied both of us, his cane in one hand, me in the other. His irises burned like twin candles, lighting our way.

Then his mouth came down on mine, hard, fast, his fist bunched in my shirt. I parted for him, whimpering under the possessive sweep of his tongue as we bumped into chairs and countertops. Here was Bryn—brilliant, scorching lightning, heat, and wildness. A power straight from Ruhaven.

His cane clattered to the floor.

I yanked him against me, twining my hands around his neck, needing all of him.

When we hit the table, he grabbed my hips and lifted me onto it in one smooth motion. “I need you, Rowan. I have since I first saw you in L’Ardoise.”

Covering his mouth with mine, I dragged him on top of me. Newspapers scattered, a vase of roses rolled, spun, whistled through the air, and cracked on the ground.

God, how I loved the shape of his lips, the way he teased with every kiss, the hard bites he left along my neck. Maybe here would be better than a room—it was certainly now , and I couldn’t think of anything more critical.

“I want to know you, Bryn, not Sahn tonight.” I just hoped I was enough too.

He captured my wrists, pinned them over my head. I groaned as the weight of him settled between my legs. “You already have me, my Rowan,” he promised a second before his warm mouth devoured mine. His tongue swept in hungrily, swallowing my embarrassing moans, testing what was still new and undiscovered between us.

Panting, breathless, I murmured, “I love your mouth.”

He licked a hot trail to the opening of my blouse until I was writhing against him. “This bodes well for us then, as it has not done very much yet.”

Promise?

His answering laugh was like velvet in my mind.

Shaking my wrists free, I wrenched at his shirt buttons, kissed my way down the side of his throat, loving every whisper of skin and breath that tasted of Ruhaven. I started peeling his shirt off, needing to see him bared as he’d been at the Gate.

“Rowan,” he said, and the slight waver in his voice had me hesitating. I have not been with anyone since I saw you in L’Ardoise.

I nodded as my eyes trailed over the sweat and rain dampening his chest. Why was he mentioning this now? I didn’t want to ever think of him with anyone. So I tugged his shirt off his muscled shoulders, tossed it into a heap in the kitchen. Was I supposed to tell him when I’d been with someone last? Maybe this was a Norwegian custom or—

Oh.

All my thoughts died when I feasted on the sight of his bare torso.

Interlocked gears, woven together by vines from Ruhaven, twisted along his nipple, spiraling in a forest of dark tattoos over abs damp from the club. I ran my hands down his chest, around his pebbled nipples, over grooved abs that disappeared into his jeans. He waited as I memorized him, as I looked at the reminder he’d stamped on himself, at Sahn, at Ruhaven, at the promise of both he could give.

He jolted when I dipped my finger under the band of his jeans, over the hard edges of his hips.

His burning eyes found mine for a heartbeat.

Before I could reach the other blatant evidence of his arousal, he pulled me to sitting. “Rowan,” he breathed against my neck. “Will we go to my room?”

Yes. His room, in his bed, with Bryn above me. And his golden eyes in the dark.

Half-naked already, he lifted me off the table, set me on my unsteady feet, and shot me a blinding grin when I wobbled.

Then his mouth was on mine again, warm, soft, and patient. His fingers tangled in my hair as we stumbled like teenagers through the kitchen, his cane long forgotten. He slapped the wall for balance, knocking into old paintings that would wind up with both of us in trouble if any one of those broke. The Jesus statue nearly toppled when he gripped the top of the doorjamb.

By the time we made it to the lounge, we were both breathless and laughing, eyeing the stairs with what must have been mirror expressions.

Too far . I grabbed Bryn and shoved him into the velvet chair by the fireplace.

He blinked at me through glittering eyes. “My Rowan, if the walls are quite thin, I should think the lounge will be even—” He broke off on a low curse as I straddled him, pressed myself to the rigid length straining under his jeans.

Rowan , he groaned.

“We’ll go upstairs, soon,” I murmured, swallowing his ragged breaths as I moved against him. “Just let me…” I needed to feel him under me, just a moment longer, before things became awkward and I tripped over my shoelaces.

Or didn’t live up to Nereida.

I ran my hands over his shoulders, traced his tattoos with my tongue, bit into his soft nipple that tasted of melted ice. The house groaned long and loud in the winter storm. Fireworks exploded, their twinkling colors glowing through the window.

His fingers curled under my chin, tilting my mouth to meet his before his hands dipped into the opening of my blouse. His touch was soft and teasing at first, but my pulse skipped a beat when a button snapped open.

“Rowan,” Bryn warned, “I believe you owe me one shirt.”

The reminder of how I’d left him at the Gate had my toes curling into the chair.

Chill air brushed the swell of my breasts as he slowly undid each glittering button, somehow, without touching my burning skin beneath. When he finished them all, he tugged on my braid to raise my head.

Our eyes met.

It was the same punch from all those months ago, when I’d first stood in the doorway of his office and felt my knees give. Except this time, his fired gold.

Rowan, how desperately I want you.

My breathing hitched, but his eyes never left mine as he glided the shirt over my shoulders, his thumbs brushing my skin as he tugged one sleeve at a time. I shivered on his lap, pressed my palms to his chest for warmth, then lowered my eyes to his mouth when I couldn’t hold his gaze.

He’d seen me before—I shouldn’t be this nervous. But it was Bryn , and no one had ever looked at me like he did.

My bra’s clasp snapped like a twig in the quiet. But when I tried to lean into Bryn, he held me firmly and slid the loosened straps over my arms.

A moment later, my bra joined the blouse on the rug, and I sat, naked from the waist up, on his lap. It was a strange thrill to be here with him like this, to be exposed in real life instead of the memory. But even as I felt my breasts peak in the crisp night air, he didn’t look down.

“Rowan,” Bryn whispered, hands circling my waist. “You need not be so nervous of me. I have known you for years.”

I swallowed, nodded.

Then his eyes left mine with terrifying, exhilarating slowness, trailing jolts of electricity wherever they touched like he was sketching me in the kitchen again. Down my nose and lips, the hollow of my throat, the sharper bones in my collarbone, until my breasts throbbed to feel just his gaze on them too.

And then they did.

Goosebumps spread over my chest, the skin tightening, begging, almost like he’d brushed a cold silk cloth over me instead of the eyes flaring hotly on my breasts.

“Do you know what I thought when I saw you in the Gate?” Bryn asked, hands tightening below my ribs. “Naked and shivering in the place between worlds?”

I closed my eyes because him, his words, the memory, it all left me teetering on the edge of delirious arousal and nerves. “Why I was weirdly aroused by light?”

I felt his smile. “No, Rowan. I thought you were more beautiful than even Nereida.” He skimmed a teasing knuckle along the underside of my breasts, just enough to have me leaning in, not enough to satisfy. “Did you enjoy how I touched you then?” His voice was rolling thunder in a storm.

A memory flashed of light dragging up my body, kissing my palms, threading through my hair, brushing my lips. His memory.

“You know I did,” I whispered.

“Tell me, Rowan.”

The man was maddening. “Yes, yes. It was better, better than even Sahn.”

And like that day, I relaxed helplessly into the fingers that tugged my hair until I leaned back into his arms. The chair gave a quiet groan as he tilted forward.

“Rowan,” he said, and this time, I felt his breath tease my nipple, taunting, arousing, the heat of him against the chill air driving me crazy. “I much prefer seeing you here, in my arms, than in a dream.”

I clutched his shoulders, unable to move, to do anything other than beg for that touch again.

Then his mouth closed over me.

A whimper escaped my lips. Teeth scraped along my skin, his breath like fire against me, always tantalizingly close but too far. He cupped my other breast and brushed his thumb over my nipple. Soft, light touches that dragged his name from me.

While he played, his tongue circled over and over. And when at last he sucked me between his teeth, I melted to liquid honey in his arms.

It was better than Sahn.

Because this was Bryn, the man I’d lain with in the Gate for months, who hadn’t given up on us when I’d accused him of the worst possible things, who’d nearly died up there before we ever met.

I tried to pretend the hand cupping my breasts, the mouth suckling them, wasn’t making me vibrate. “You never did this when you lifted me out of the Gate,” I managed, voice embarrassingly throaty.

He tugged lightly with his teeth, sending a bolt of pleasure through me. “I restrained myself. Through some reservoir of self-control that even I am startled by.”

I grinned up at the ceiling.

Did you like when I showed you a memory before?

Yes, yes . And I didn’t know if I was agreeing to the question or the mouth devouring me.

Slowly, Naruka’s molded ceiling transformed into Ruhaven’s night sky, where a million tiny gears floated and shimmered in a dizzying splash of stars. “Do you remember when I…” Bryn murmured.

And when the stars parted, Sahn and Nereida appeared in another memory, his angelic wings covering her in a lavender field. One of the memories we’d lived together. Laughing. Moaning. Rolling. Crying out when he drove into her, pinning Nereida into the lavender, then they flipped and she rose above him.

I dug my fingers into Bryn’s shoulders, rocking against him as Nereida did with Sahn, and held him to me. With his mouth at my breasts, his hands curling around my back, the threads of gold glittered around us like the dream, like the ribbon that had lifted me from Ruhaven.

He swirled his tongue once, twice, licking me like ice cream. My body started to hum and beg in places I didn’t know I had, and I imagined how it would feel to have Bryn looking at me at last and not just through Sahn’s eyes.

The memory wavered in the ceiling.

Was he thinking of her now? Of the years he had wanted and hoped and given up for Nereida? All to find this one woman. Had he wanted to swap me for Nereida? To spend years trying to locate her soul in the Ledger , not to be with the woman she became, but to exchange her?

No. No, Tye was wrong.

Bryn released me with a soft sucking sound. A shudder wracked my spine when he blew teasingly on the damp trail over my breasts before his hot tongue licked its way upwards. He nuzzled my neck, kissed my birthmark with soft affection, but in question too.

When his eyes locked on mine at last, my knees trembled.

What is it, Rowan?

Nothing.

He searched my face. There is something else, not merely nerves. He pulled me against him, so his body warmed me immediately. Tell me.

Later.

No, now. His hands, gently stroking my hair, were at odds with the voice. But I didn’t want to stop, didn’t want to face these questions, didn’t want to think about whatever Tye had tried to tell me.

Rowan, he demanded, and I knew he wouldn’t continue now.

He waited, the silence stretching between us.

You were looking for Nereida in the Ledger , I began .

His brows drew together. “Yes.”

“Why?” It was simpler to just ask, wasn’t it? Would he lie? Could I handle it if he didn’t?

His eyes flickered between blue and gold, a candle’s flame caught in the wind. “Because she, you , are my mate. Please tell me what you are thinking, Rowan. I do not understand.”

I felt the intensity of his stare in my toes. This was so hard to say, impossible to admit what I believed.

I want to know—to know if you wanted to find me for me. Or if you did it just to trade me for her. For Nereida. So I would make the Fall and you would have her back.

Gold extinguished. Proof before the admission fell from his damp lips. My ears hollowed on the emptiness of Narurka, the silence before the storm as the sky inhaled.

Even still, when his response tumbled through the void, the lack of denial had my stomach bottoming out.

Did Tye tell you that?

So it was true. He’d wanted to trade me. It really was that simple. This wasn’t about me at all—I could be that—that chair for all I mattered.

Shaking, I crawled off Bryn. I scooped up my shirt, fumbling with the inside-out sleeve.

“Rowan, that was before I knew you,” Bryn explained like there wasn’t an invisible knife in my back. “I knew only Nereida. Loved only Nereida. But, of course, it is different now.”

He looked at me with confused arousal, his moonlit hair mussed from where my fingers had held him against me, his lips reddened. The flickering fairy lights taunted the marks I’d bitten on his shoulder so that he looked like some sex-starved Greek god.

I started redressing with my bra first this time, tugging it over my sensitive skin. “You wanted to trade me,” I repeated, voice hollow. “It’s okay. I understand.” Understood what Nereida was to him, and what I couldn’t be.

“You are entirely mistaken,” he said, sounding almost angry as he rose half-naked from the chair. “You continually think the worst of me in all cases. Shall I never earn your faith?”

I fumbled with the bra snap. All my clothes were too tight; I couldn’t breathe .

In two strides, Bryn was there, and in one movement, he snapped the bra clasp closed, then gripped my wrists. “Rowan, look at me.” He exhaled softly in the darkness. “Please.”

I swore I felt a gentle tugging on my ribs before I glanced up.

Lanterns colored half of Bryn’s face in their soft gold. The other half disappeared in cool, violet shadows. His skin glowed, sweaty and tattooed. I couldn’t weather the storm on Bryn’s face when he looked at me like that, as my own heart betrayed me with each pounding kick in my throat.

He squeezed my wrists. “Yes, I intended to make the Fall with the woman who Nereida became—no, do not pull away from me,” he said firmly when I shoved at him. “I did not see this as a trade. I always intended to make the Fall and I assumed the woman who Nereida became would as well.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that’s what you wanted?” Then, at least I could have prepared myself.

“Perhaps I should have, but I have not wanted to do so since I met you in L’Ardoise. When I saw you at The Blue Nose, when I felt…”

—This connection between us—

“—it changed things for me. I did not expect to recognize you as I did. And now—now, I no longer feel the same as I once did.”

I struggled not to drown in the promise he dangled before me. So I nodded at the tattoos on his bare, sweaty chest. “You branded yourself with Ruhaven after you were exiled so you’d never forget. But if you don’t make the Fall, you’ll never see the memories again, never see Nereida.”

And he’d never give that up.

Bryn flattened my hands against his heart, held them there until his eyes were a burning sun, melting my resolve. “I would give up far more for you,” he promised, low and rough. “When we are in Ruhaven, I see only you in Nereida. When O’Sahnazekiel is with her, I imagine it is your dark hair, your brown eyes, your smile. My Rowan, how can you not see how deliriously in love with you I am?”

The words were a direct punch through my chest, which was all the more tender and vulnerable from the emotional beating it’d taken. Did he mean it? Surely he wouldn’t say that so effortlessly if he felt even a fraction of what was burning me from the inside.

His eyes softened. “Is that what you needed to hear, Rowan? These words mean little when we are bound across eternity. When I have you, my mate, alive and whole and beautiful, a gift far better than Nereida a lifetime ago.”

I wanted to believe him so badly, it caused my ribs to throb. He may not need the words, but I did. I always would.

“You say you didn’t want to trade me after you saw me, but how can I believe that? You tried to die for Nereida and—” His eyes widened. “—And she’s why you go to the Gate every morning, why you were exiled, and you spent years trying to find me to get her back. Now you want me to believe you’d change your mind because of one visit to a bar? For a college dropout fixing a fuse box, who doesn’t even have a real Mark, who isn’t in the Ledg —”

On a low curse, Bryn covered my mouth with his. “I love you, my Rowan,” he said roughly as gold swirled around us. “And I will give you whichever words you require to believe it.”

Even if I won’t make the Fall?

Bang.

Naruka’s main doors burst open.