34. Astra #2
His breathing was too controlled. Each breath stopped before it reached the bottom of his lungs.
I closed the door.
“Jonah.”
“I can’t put it back.”
“Do you want to?”
He turned his head. Sweat shone at his temple, and the strain around his mouth belonged to a man holding a weight long after his muscles had begun to fail.
“No,” he said. “That is what frightens me.”
I crossed the room slowly. Bitterleaf clung to his shirt beneath the sharper trace of sweat. His knuckles had gone pale against the wall.
I touched the back of his hand.
His fingers flexed beneath mine. He did not move away.
“You’re hurt,” I said.
“I can manage the arm.”
“I wasn’t talking about your arm.”
He lowered his head. Copper light passed beneath my fingertips and traveled into his wrist, following my touch.
I slid my hand up to his shoulder and turned him toward me. He moved slowly, the muscles beneath my palm still rigid. Copper had entered his eyes around the pupils. The color made the gray look almost silver.
“In this room, before they interrupted us, we chose the bond,” I said. “I haven’t changed my mind.”
“Neither have I.”
The answer came without hesitation. His body was less certain. He kept his hands rigidly open at his sides, afraid to trust them on me.
I took one of them and placed it at my waist.
His palm settled against me with painful care.
“You won’t hurt me.”
His mouth tightened, but he left his hand where I had put it.
His grip tightened enough for me to feel each finger through my clothes.
I reached for his face. The tremor in his jaw passed into my palm. He closed his eyes and leaned into the touch, barely enough to see unless I was looking for it.
“You don’t have to force any of it down for me,” I said.
He opened his eyes.
“Once I stop, I may not be able to start again.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
I drew him down and kissed him.
For the first breath, his mouth barely moved against mine. Restraint held in the careful angle of his head, in the hand that remained fixed at my waist, in the distance he kept between our bodies.
Then his breath broke.
His free hand came to the back of my neck. He kissed me again with his mouth open and pulled me against him until I felt the hard rise and fall of his chest. Heat poured through his shirt. Copper light brightened between us, turning the thin linen luminous wherever my body touched his.
I tasted salt at the corner of his mouth. His injured arm shook around me. When I tried to ease my weight away from it, he made a rough sound and held me closer.
“Stay,” he said against my lips.
I kissed him once more, slower. His thumb moved beneath my ear, finding the same place he had touched in the salle at Zenith Hall with his hands tangled in my hair. Nothing about the hand holding me was hidden now.
The unfinished line pulled tight at my wrist.
Hale felt it. He drew back far enough to look down between us. His fingers found mine, fever-warm and unsteady, and folded through them.
“I still choose it,” I said.
His wrist turned until the two open ends rested together.
“So do I.”
Heat struck through my hand and caught beneath my ribs.
His fingers convulsed around mine. For an instant they began to loosen, the old reflex pulling him back toward concealment. I held his gaze and kept my hand where it was.
Suppression left him in jolts. Copper light pushed through one channel of his Mark, then another. Each release carried the pain in his arm, the sickening drop of fear, and underneath both, relief so sharp it hurt to feel.
His forehead came down against mine.
“Astra.”
My name shook in his mouth. I turned my wrist more firmly against his.
The copper light crossed the final gap.
It swept over our joined hands and climbed both our arms, hot enough to draw a gasp from me. Hale’s knees bent. I caught his shoulder, and his arm closed hard around my waist as we steadied each other beside the bed.
The bond opened through me in a rush of heat, bruised muscle, and the fierce attention that was unmistakably his. Fear came with it. So did the conscious release of the discipline he had used to contain it. He had not stripped anything away before letting me in.
The third bond settled beside the other two.
Caspian remained a cool marble steadiness at my wrist. Kieran’s green-gold line carried exhaustion, pain, and the relief of being back among us. Hale’s copper burned brighter than either, newly released and trembling with the effort of remaining open.
He buried his face against my neck.
For several breaths, neither of us spoke. His weight rested against me. I held the back of his head and felt the tremors move through him, weaker each time.
When he finally lifted his face, the strain had not vanished. He looked exhausted and startled, his mouth reddened from mine. His eyes stayed on mine without the guarded distance I had learned to expect.
I touched the line at his wrist.
It answered without retreating.
Before the third line closed, the power at my wrist had ended with Caspian and Kieran. Now the light continued past Hale’s line and warmed my fingertips, with no corresponding presence at its other end.
I could not feel the stewards beyond the door or the healer in the corridor. To understand what had changed, I would have to touch a Mark belonging to someone outside the bonds.
I closed my fingers before it could go farther.
Hale’s hand tightened at my waist. “Astra?”
Copper still filled every channel of Hale’s Mark. His muscles trembled, but the light no longer battered against the suppression he had released.
“What did you feel?” he asked.
Outside the room, the healer ordered the stewards away from Kieran’s door. The administrator answered someone at the junction.
“The power doesn’t stop with the three of you anymore,” I said.
Hale looked down at our joined wrists.
Three completed lines burned against my pulse.