Chapter 25
ROLAND
Aderyn was crying. I came to with wet cheeks and salty lips and the warm tingle of his kiss.
It was a much better feeling than the buzzing in the back of my skull, and as soon as I was aware of it, I slipped my fingers into the curtain of his sunshine-gold hair and kissed him deeply.
The sound he made was sharp and surprised when I pulled him in, but then he was clutching me tight, his weight pressing me into the ground, his elbow on my chest.
I didn’t care. We were kissing.
Aderyn had flown across the sea to come and get me.
Whatever I’d done, he didn’t hate me so completely that he let me go.
Then, his balled-up fist hit my chest.
“Y-You were s-stone,” he hiccupped.
At first, I didn’t understand what he meant. I remembered the earth, and reaching for it, and then nothing.
But if he meant it literally—
“I did magic?”
Aderyn let out a wet sob. His fingers clawed at my back and pressed into my flesh, blunt but hard enough to bruise. As he tipped forward, pressing his face to my chest, I wrapped my arms around him.
I’d done magic.
I’d made myself something other than the monster I feared I was.
I thought the blood had killed my magic, that I’d lost it forever.
Magic was all my father had ever wanted of me, and I’d lost it.
Gently, I untangled his arms from around my middle and eased him back enough that I could sit up.
Aderyn squeezed his empty hands, folding his thumbs tight beneath his fingers. I glanced at them, but my eyes caught on an angry red line, carved down his arm.
I clutched his wrist and tugged his arm toward me. His fist went slack, and I pressed my palm on top of his cut.
For once, the call of the blood wasn’t enough to hold my gaze for long. I stared into his glistening emerald eyes. I hated the tears I’d put there, the wound on his arm that only existed because I was so weak.
I had to do better.
“I love you,” I whispered, my throat tight and voice hoarse.
“I love you too.”
My smile trembled on my face and I nodded.
“I need you to hear me,” I went on, squeezing his arm. “Never this.” I’d do all I could to make sure Aderyn never bled again. “I’d rather die than hurt you.”
His nose flared. “I’d rather die than lose you.”
I bit my lip against my widening smile.
I didn’t want that—never even wanted to think about him dying—but he didn’t want to lose me. He wanted to be with me.
As flawed as I was, I hadn’t lost him forever.
Only days ago, my world had ended.
Now, he was back.
“Then we’ll have to find some compromise so that neither one of us dies, hm?”
Aderyn ducked his head, and I bent forward to try and hold his eye, but he staunchly avoided looking at me.
“I can do it, though.”
I scowled. “Do what?”
“Give you blood.”
“No—”
“If that’s what you need—”
“I won’t—”
“I don’t want to hold you back!” Aderyn squeezed his eyes shut tight. His legs bent up, like he meant to curl into a ball, and he pulled his arm—not quite enough to pull himself free of me, but that was clearly the direction he was headed.
I held on tight.
If he’d come back, all this way, there was no way I was letting him go again.
“That’s what you’re worried about?” I asked, reaching for his face. I brushed my fingers across his cheek, and he stared at me with wide, shining eyes.
“I’m not weak,” he said plaintively.
I shook my head. I wanted to laugh, but bit my tongue. How could he possibly think that?
“No,” I agreed. “You aren’t.”
“So I can do it.”
I drew him in, slow and by his arm at first. When he was close enough, I reached out and wrapped my arm around his waist. With him kneeling in my lap, I stretched up and up until my lips brushed his.
“I know you can. You can. Aderyn, you’re the strongest person I know.
” All he’d survived, all he’d come back from—no, there was no one more outstanding in all of Llangard or beyond it.
“I have never, for even one second, thought you were weak. I worry that—” I flinched.
I wished I could be done with this conversation, all of it.
If I pulled back the shroud and revealed myself to be as flawed as I really was, had always been, what next?
I should know better than to think poorly of Aderyn, and I didn’t, but I was still afraid—
Well, I was afraid that I wasn’t worth loving if I wasn’t a perfect prince, a perfect king, a perfect man. After my father had forgotten me, nothing had ever quite filled that hole.
Yes, I had my family.
I didn’t even doubt that I was loved.
But surely there was a limit to it. If I failed, I risked losing everyone I cared for, so it was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, to admit my mistakes.
“I worry that I’m weak,” I whispered. “All I want to do is make you happy, but I’m afraid I’ll hurt you, and you’ll—you’ll stay anyway, to care for me, and I’ll be nothing but a burden.
A drain. I’m afraid I’ll use you. I’ll be just like my father.
Like Vidar. Another Cavendish king who demands everything of everyone around him.
I want to be better than that. I wish I were worthy of—” My breath hitched. I squeezed my eyes shut.
“You are,” Aderyn insisted. His hands cupped my face.
I scoffed, the sound muffled and choked with feeling. “I’m ruined.”
“Roland—” Aderyn tipped my face up and I blinked my eyes open. They stung, but the sight of him allowed me to draw in a long, shaky breath. “You’re not. There’s no such thing. Not for anyone, but especially not for you.”
I searched his face for any sign that he was simply being kind. He couldn’t mean that. Surely there were lines that couldn’t be crossed, ones that I’d blown to bits.
But Aderyn simply stared at me, beseeching and serious. Even the pucker of his brow said he—he loved me, just as I was, even there on the ground, delirious.
I kissed him then, holding him gently. He deserved all the tenderness in the world, and I’d give it to him, if only—
“Please stay,” I begged into his soft lips.
It was selfish and pitiful, yes, but right then, it didn’t matter.
I was a better man with him at my side, or at least I wanted to be one, and it felt a little easier knowing half my heart was close at hand.
“I miss you so much when you’re gone. I want to see you every morning, kiss you every night.
My heart aches when you aren’t with me.”
I felt Aderyn’s nod against my lips, the soft curve of his smile before I slipped my tongue into his mouth.
Perfect.
“I’d give you my crown,” I promised.
Aderyn snorted, shaking his head. “I don’t want it.”
“You’d look quite nice in jewels though.”
He bit his lip, leaning back. “What about feathers?”
“A thousand thousand feathers,” I swore.
He kissed me again, and I slipped my hand up his bare leg, around his back, pulled him close. That was all I needed—Aderyn close. Not his blood. Not the crown or Llangard or anything else.
I just needed Aderyn, and to know that he loved me, despite all the reasons I thought he shouldn’t.
It said something about our pain, exhaustion, and fear that we had one outfit between the pair of us, were each half naked, and our bodies didn’t rouse for the moment—at least not beyond what was manageable to set aside.
I staggered to my feet and swept Aderyn into my arms. It would’ve been easier to carry him at distance on my back again, but, at least for a little while, I needed to see him.
We didn’t make it very far like that, before my arms started to shake and we had to adjust, and even afterward, my limbs cramped and my stomach turned.
I’d have thought my magic had done some irreparable damage if the feeling weren’t so familiar, but I’d meant what I said.
I wouldn’t take blood from Aderyn, not ever, and if that meant I’d never drink it again, I’d have to manage despite the pain.
We went until we saw a farmhouse in the distance, a woven fence around a small garden just outside the cottage.
When we were close, a head popped up, and a woman in a rough-spun dress turned our way. Her hair was gray, her hands knobbed and covered in dirt.
Aderyn slipped off my back, and I leaned hard against the fence to stay upright.
“Excuse me, madam.” I twisted my signet off my swollen finger. I clutched it tight and held it out to her. “We require assistance. I’m Roland Cavendish—”
I’d hardly gotten my name out before she dropped to her knees and ducked her head. “My king.”
I shook my head. That didn’t matter. If we didn’t make it back to the Spires, I’d be no king at all.
“Please—” I bent over the fence to help her up again, but the sudden movement, the way my head swam, I swayed and nearly stumbled over.
Aderyn caught me, tugging on my arm. “He needs to sit down,” he insisted. “May we come inside?”
“Of course,” she waved us feverishly into the garden and toward her cottage. “This way. Come along.”