Chapter 32 #3
He blew out a quick, forceful breath and shook his head as if he were trying to clear it.
“I don’t know the answer to that, but over the years, I’ve heard Kesh praising other gods that are our enemies.
Just little things, here and there. But all of this does make me wonder if Kesh is plotting with Chaos. ”
Nin turned to face the fire, bracelets jingling as he lifted his hands to warm them.
“Plotting with Chaos…,” I repeated. “To murder you?”
“Kesh wanted to be inside the aegis. I was significantly more vulnerable inside it. Perhaps even mortal. Riverbend was like the desert where Chaos challenged my father.”
Okay, sure, that was worrisome, but we were out of Riverbend.
“Look, I don’t know how your family operates, but I’ve known plenty of folks who didn’t get along with blood kin.
If Kesh was working with Chaos to take you down for whatever reason—spite, jealousy, power…
It doesn’t matter now because we’re free of the aegis. Kesh played his cards and lost.”
Nin’s brow furrowed. “You think so?”
I didn’t have any way of actually knowing, but I could tell that Nin needed it to be true. “Yes, I think so. Now, since we’re done with the privacy wall, and I can see blood dripping down your neck, why don’t you let me clean your wound?”
His eyes softened, and he nodded, taking a seat in the wingback chair. I moved the basin of water to better reach it, dunked in a cloth, and twisted it. Then I set to work cleaning the dried blood. “Your shoulder has scarred up nicely,” I said. “Miraculous, really.”
“But here I am with another injury,” he mumbled.
“Bodies get injured.”
“Not mine,” he said, half-angry, half-frustrated. Then he sighed and looked into my face for a moment. “I’m sorry to be poor company. My thoughts are dark because I fear I cannot get back home.”
“You’re never poor company,” I told him, gently wiping his skin and watching the basin turn red when I set the cloth back inside the water. “Is there any other way for you to get back, other than your pendant? Wouldn’t your parents be looking for you?”
“My father cannot leave the Nightlands,” he reminded me. “Back there, no time has passed. It has been mere moments since I disappeared. They wouldn’t even have had a chance to figure out what has happened.”
I cleaned enough of the dried blood to find the actual knife mark on his throat. It still bled a little when I brushed over it with the damp cloth, causing Nin to sharply wince—“Sorry, sorry, sorry!”—but it didn’t need stitches, thank goodness.
“All right, then. If no rescue is coming, then how are we going to find Lavina? Can you catch her ‘scent’ like you did your brother’s?”
“I don’t know.”
“How could you not know?”
“Because I don’t. I’m not all-seeing.”
“You’ve bragged about knowing all names.”
“Yes, because I’m an observer, a collector, a listener. That is my nature. My mother has all the pathfinding skills—not me.”
“But you can perceive all the souls around us.”
“In my vicinity, yes. Not all the souls around the world.”
“What about just the souls in New York? Hoffmann said she hasn’t gone far.”
Nin grabbed my wrist to stop me from cleaning. “Molly O’Rinn, you are being too stubborn.” His gaze raced from the damp cloth in my hand, up my arm, and across my body. “And you must stop cleaning because I cannot think when I’m around you.”
“Why?”
Heavily hooded eyes looked up at my face. “Do you truly not know?”
My stomach fluttered. “No.”
“I always find it hard to think around you,” he said, taking the cloth from my hand and setting it aside. “But especially when you’re standing in the firelight, and I can see your belly button through that gauze you’re wearing.”
Oh God. I tried to cover myself up, but he grabbed my other hand.
“No, Molly. You never have to be modest with me. There’s only room for truth between us. And this is mine,” he said, his eyes flicking back and forth between mine. “When I look at you, I am distracted. I don’t think about how I’m going to get home.”
“You don’t?” My voice sounded so small and fragile.
He shook his head. “I think of every time you’ve willingly touched me.
I think about your hand on my back when we were hiding in the carriage.
I think of how your lips tasted that day in the greenhouse, and how you felt in my arms on your bed.
I want you to touch me again, and I want to touch you.
But I am afraid that if I do, I won’t want to go home. And that frightens me the most.”
I drew a sharp breath. I couldn’t say anything. My throat had closed, and my tongue wouldn’t move. Strong emotions tangled inside my breast.
His thumb drew invisible circles on the side of my hand, causing a wave of warm chills. “Tell me, Molly,” he murmured. “What frightens you the most?”
I considered this and tried to answer honestly. “Being left behind, abandoned by people I care about.”
“Are you worried I will do that?”
“You can’t promise you won’t. I know that. We’re from different worlds.”
“If I must leave, I will always return to you. That is a promise I can make, and I don’t know if it’s good enough. But it is honest. What else are you afraid of?”
It took me too long to answer, but I finally did. “I made a vow to my mother to never pursue love, and I’m scared of breaking it. But I’m also worried that she was wrong, and that scares me more.”
We held each other’s hands, not looking at the other’s face for an impossibly long moment.
“Molly,” Nin whispered.
“Yes?” I whispered back.
“I think in some ways we’re afraid of the same thing.”
“Maybe. But I might be more scared than you. I’m positively terrified.”
A fire caught behind his eyes. “How terrified?”
“Probably not nearly enough for my own good,” I said, swallowing hard.
He chuckled and loosely bit his bottom lip for a moment. “What should we do about it?”
“I was always taught that the best way to get rid of fear is to face it.”
“Wise advice,” he said in a low, deep voice. “Couldn’t agree more.” His arm slipped around my waist. Goose bumps blossomed across my skin. “I will face any fear with you, Molly. Even my own. But if you change your mind, I can rebuild the privacy wall.”
“No walls,” I whispered.
“Come to me, my stubborn nurse,” he murmured, drawing me into his lap. “I don’t want to think anymore. Let’s be afraid together. What do you say?”
My nerves walked a tightrope between fear and exhilaration.
His scent was all around me, his thighs warm beneath my legs.
I was so overwhelmed, I couldn’t even answer him.
All I could do was lean my cheek against his as his arms encircled me.
When he pulled me in tighter and his face dropped to my neck, he breathed me in like he was drowning and I was fresh air. I shivered violently.
“Please tell me you want this too,” he whispered so softly, I almost thought I imagined it.
How can a person be scared but also want something more than anything else?
That is how I felt, and to make the fear go away, I kissed the side of his neck—as a test. As an answer to his question.
And I felt him groan with pleasure beneath my lips.
So I kissed him again, tasting the salt of his skin. Luxuriating in how his body responded.
And little by little, kiss by kiss, the fear began slipping away.
Strong hands pulled me further into his lap, urging, until my legs were around his waist. I could feel him rigid between my thighs, and a corresponding warmth flooding the center of me. He held my body away. “Are you still afraid?”
I shook my head, and his mouth came down on mine.
I wasn’t afraid when his hands roamed under my chemise to touch me in places where no one else had.
Or when his hips pressed against mine, insistent.
Or even when he slung an arm around me to lift and carry me to the rug below us, where we stripped off what remained of our clothing and stared at each other in wonder.
And I was not afraid when he slid his body into mine, whispering impossible promises to me in the warmth of the hearth that made the world disappear and my heart soar like we were both flying, higher and higher, and nothing could stop us.
Nothing.
At.
All.
And afterward, as we lay together, listening to each other’s thudding hearts, our breath intermingling and legs tangled together, I wondered if I didn’t need to be afraid of anything ever again.