Chapter 28
Iwake up slowly, like swimming up from deep water.
Everything hurts. Not the sharp, immediate pain of injury, but the deep, bone-aching exhaustion of having been put back together wrong. My body feels like it's been taken apart and reassembled by someone who had most of the pieces but wasn't quite sure how they fit.
The void. The collector. Croesus flooding me with his essence to burn away the emptiness trying to erase me. I remember dying.
Or almost dying.
The line between the two feels very thin at the moment.
I open my eyes slowly, expecting the familiar sight of my room, the golden walls, the shifting ceiling, the too-soft bed I've gotten used to over the past weeks.
Instead, I'm somewhere else entirely.
Croesus's private chambers. The dessert sunset through the windows finally giving me a hint in a house full of golden rooms.
And sitting in a chair beside the bed, slumped forward with his head in his hands, is Croesus.
He looks wrecked.
There's no other word for it. His usually immaculate hair is disheveled, falling forward into his face.
His clothes, just a white shirt and dark pants, no jacket, are rumpled and creased.
There are dark circles under his eyes, and his skin has a grayish tint I've never seen before, like he hasn't slept in days.
Through the binding, I feel him, exhaustion so profound, it tugs me down, fear that hasn't quite faded, and underneath it all, a desperate relief that's trying to overtake everything else.
He's been here the entire time. However long I've been unconscious, he's been sitting in that chair, watching me, waiting for me to wake up.
"Croesus," I whisper.
His head snaps up so fast I hear his neck crack. Those gold eyes situate in my face, and for a moment, he just stares. Like he's afraid if he blinks, I'll disappear.
Then he's moving, out of the chair and onto the bed beside me in one fluid motion, his hands framing my face, his forehead pressing against mine.
"You're awake." His voice is hoarse, broken. "Thank the Gods. Thank all the gods. You're awake."
Through the binding, I feel everything he's been holding back, the terror, the helplessness, the desperate prayer that I would open my eyes again. The fear that he'd lost me before he had the chance to...
To what? The emotion is too tangled to parse clearly. But it feels like love.
"How long?" I ask.
"Three days." His hands are shaking. I can feel them trembling against my skin. "Three days since the attack. Since you," His voice breaks. "Since I almost lost you."
Days. I've been unconscious for three days while he sat here and waited?
"The meeting?"
"Postponed. Rescheduled. I don't care." His eyes close. "You almost died, Raven. You tried to absorb a collectorand it nearly erased you from existence. Do you understand that? Not killed you. Erased you. Made it so you never were."
"But you stopped it."
"Barely." His jaw clenches.
I remember that part. The overwhelming hunger, the desperate need to have and hold and possess everything. The way it felt like I was being remade into something that could never be satisfied.
"But it didn't," I say quietly. "I'm still me."
"Are you?" His eyes open, searching my face. "Or are you changed? Marked by my power in ways we don't understand yet?"
I take inventory. My body feels wrong, yes, but in the way that everything feels wrong after trauma. Not fundamentally different. Not corrupted or transformed.
Through the binding, I can feel Croesus more clearly than before, like the channel between us has widened, deepened. But I can also feel where I end and he begins. We're still separate. Still ourselves.
"I'm still me," I repeat. "Just...tired."
Something in his expression cracks. Relief and grief and fear all tangled together.
"You scared me," he whispers. "II've seen empires rise and fall.
I've watched everything I've ever known turn to dust. And I've never been scared like this.
Not once." His forehead presses harder against mine.
"Until I felt you dying through the binding and realized I couldn't stop it. "
My breath catches. This is as close to an admission as he's ever come. As vulnerable as I've ever seen him.
"I'm okay," I say. "I'm here. I'm alive."
"For now." He pulls back enough to look at me properly. "But they're coming for you, Raven. Whoever sent those collectors, they know where you are. They know what you are. And they will try again."
"So we stop them. We call the meeting like you planned."
"No." The word is sharp, immediate. "The meeting is off. I'm keeping you here. Protected. Hidden. They can't take you if they can't find you."
I stare at him. "You can't keep me locked up forever."
"Watch me." His voice is cold, determined. "I've spent a long long time collecting things, Raven. Keeping them safe. Preserving them. I'm very good at it." His hands slide from my face to my shoulders. "And you're mine. My sin eater. My responsibility. I will not lose you."
Through the binding, I feel his desperation. The way he's clinging to control because the alternative, admitting he can't protect me, that I might die despite everything he does, is unbearable.
"Croesus." I cover his hands with mine. "I'm not a thing you can lock in a vault."
"I know that."
"Do you?" I meet his eyes. "Because right now, it sounds like you want to put me in a box and never let me out."
"Would that be so terrible?" His voice drops. "If I kept you safe? Protected? Alive?"
"Yes." I squeeze his hands. "Because that's not living. That's just...existing. Waiting. And I didn't survive everything I have so far just to spend the rest of my life locked away."
He flinches like I've hit him. I feel his pain, sharp and immediate. Because he knows I'm right. Knows that keeping me locked away is exactly what he wants to do and exactly what will destroy me.
"I can't lose you," he says finally. Quietly. "I won't survive it."
"You would."
"No." His voice is certain. "I wouldn't. Three thousand years of emptiness, Raven. Three thousand years of wanting everything and feeling nothing. And then you," He stops, struggling for words. "You make me feel. Not just want. Not just hunger. But need. Actual, desperate need."
My heart pounds. "Croesus..."
"I've wanted many things," he continues, the words spilling out like he can't hold them back anymore.
"I've wanted gold and jewels and souls. I've wanted power and territory and influence.
I've wanted everything this world has to offer and then everything it doesn't." His eyes meet mine.
"But I've never needed anything. Until you. "
The admission hangs in the air between us. Raw and vulnerable and terrifying.
"That's your curse talking," I say softly. "The greed."
"The greed is want. This is different." His hands tighten on my shoulders.
"When you were dying, I felt it through the binding.
Felt you slipping away. And the only thing I could think was that I would tear apart the world to keep you here.
Not because I want to possess you. But because I need you to exist."
I can't breathe. Can't think. All I can do is feel the truth of his words through the binding, the way his need for me is different from his endless wanting. Deeper. More real. More dangerous to both of us.
"I love you." The words come out before I can stop them. "I don't want to. It's terrible timing and probably suicidal and definitely complicated. But I love you."
He freezes and exhales hard through his nose. "Raven."
"You don't have to say it back. I know you can't. Not with the contract, not with everything you are." I'm babbling now, words tumbling out in a rush. "But I needed you to know. Because life is too short, or too long in your case, to not say the things that matter."
For a long moment, he just stares at me. Then, slowly, carefully, he pulls me into his arms.
Not possessively. Not hungrily. Just holding me. Like I'm something precious that might break.
"I don't know if I can love you," he says into my hair.
"I don't know if all these years of greed left me with the capacity for that.
But I know I need you. I know losing you would unmake me.
I know that when I thought you were dying, I would have traded everything, my house, my power, my immortality, to save you.
" He pulls back enough to look at me. "If that's not love, it's close enough to destroy me. "
Tears burn behind my eyes. Because it's the closest thing to a confession of love he's probably capable of. And it's more honest than any pretty words could be.
"We're a mess," I say.
"Yes."
"This is going to end badly."
"Probably."
"But we're doing it anyway."
"Yes." His thumb brushes my cheekbone. "Because I'm too greedy to let you go, and you're too stubborn to run."
I laugh, broken and wet and real. "That's the worst love story I've ever heard."
"It's ours." He kisses my forehead, gentle and claiming all at once. "And I'm keeping it."
Through the binding, I feel his determination crystallize. He's not locking me away. He's not hiding me in a vault. But he's also not letting me face this alone.
We're in this together now. For better or worse.
Probably worse. Definitely worse.
But together.
"The meeting," I say after a moment. "When?"
"Tomorrow night." He helps me sit up against the pillows. "The other Hhuses agreed to a delay. They know about the attack. Know that someone is targeting you." His jaw tightens. "They're...concerned."
"Concerned that I'll die before they can use me?"
"Something like that." He moves away from the bed, and I immediately feel the loss of his warmth. "They'll want to see you. Assess the threat. Decide if you're worth protecting, or if it's easier to let whoever is hunting you have what they want."
"Comforting."