Chapter Forty-Four
Set Down Your Armor
She asked him to lay down his armor—and for once, he wanted to.
Amerei’s fingers worked carefully at the ties of Viktor’s tunic, each knot loosening like a confession—love and guilt wound together in the dim.
The fabric clung stubbornly to the salve and bandages beneath, and she eased it down his shoulders with a reverence that left her throat tight. His skin was fire and ruin, and still—storm help her—she wanted him. Wanted him though guilt pressed hot against her chest.
Because wanting him and grieving him had become the same thing.
Her fingers stilled, grazing the black ink feathering across his ribs—warm skin over scarred muscle, the steady rise and fall of breath beneath. She hadn’t meant to linger there, but the mark drew her—dark, intimate, a symbol that seemed to hum beneath her fingers.
Viktor stilled.
Slowly, he lifted his eyes to hers. Not a word passed between them, yet his look said everything: Don’t. Not yet.
Amerei’s lips parted, a thousand questions pressing at once. She swallowed them all, only nodding before she dipped her cloth back to the salve.
And then his eyes found hers again—blue as lightning breaking stormcloud—and the world shifted into him.
Amerei wrung out the cool mixture before smoothing it gently across the bandages at his chest.
“Are you certain you don’t want something more to dull it? The herbalist said there’s delirium tincture. Even a few drops would help.”
Viktor shook his head, the smallest movement.
“I can’t,” he said. “Not while we’re still on the road. I need my head clear.”
Her lips pressed thin, but she didn’t argue.
His gaze fell away, fixed on nothing, shoulders tense beneath her touch.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, the words ragged. “I feel so—useless. Can’t even lift a blade. And my Endowment…” He drew a shallow breath, almost flinching at it. “I don’t know if I can call it like this. I’m afraid to even try.”
Her hand lingered at his chest.
“Viktor…” she breathed.
He looked up.
Her words came steady despite the tremor in her voice.
“You’ve been mine since the morning you saved me in the forest. Not because you’re a Ruakite.
Not because you’re a fine soldier. I didn’t know either of those things when I first saw you.
What I did know was this—” her voice caught, but she pressed on, eyes unyielding, “—you crossed a desert to find me. You stood before a dragon without a second thought. And that same man saved us again in the Vykenraven.”
Her fingers grazed his brow, her hand soft against his jaw.
“Let him breathe, Viktor. Let him set down his armor.”
For a moment, there was only her, his pain melting beneath her gentle touch. He searched her eyes, finding only truth there—truth that undid him more than fire, more than war. Dask—his heart ached.
I’ll never be loved so well in all my life, he thought, something breaking open inside him. Not unless I spend it with this woman.
Her hand had just dipped for the cloth again when his fingers closed over hers. He drew her across the table until she was close enough for his breath to meet hers. Then, without rush, without apology, he kissed her—slow, deep—his vow laid bare.
The Endowment stirred as if it too remembered their promise, wind slipping over her shoulders, sweeping her hair against his cheek. She melted into it, into him, feeling the unshakable truth of a man who had already chosen her, body and soul.
Her smile broke against his mouth. “There you are.”
He kissed her again, slower, fiercer, his hands cradling her face as if the world itself might vanish if he let go. His breath shuddered out against her mouth.
“In the Vykenraven,” he said, the words a quiet rasp. “I broke chains. I tore down walls. I wielded fire I never knew lived in me—because you were in danger.”
His forehead pressed to hers, voice low and breaking.
“But when the dark came for me—when I was nearly gone—it wasn’t my power that saved me. It was your voice, Amerei. Your name.” His eyes met hers. “You pulled me back.”
Her hand stayed against his cheek, trembling, steady all at once.
“Then I’ll never stop,” she whispered. “Wherever you go, I’ll call you back.”
Her words echoed in his bones, the breath between them aching with everything they’d yet to say.
Eternal.
Unstoppable.
Inevitable as night to dawn.
Then the air changed.
The candlelight flickered as though a gust of wind had passed through the room.
Viktor’s gaze flicked past her shoulder, narrowing. His whole body tensed, Endowment humming at the edges of his frame.
A hooded figure stood in the doorway’s shadow.
Sightless eyes, white as bone.
The same man he’d glimpsed once on the Whispering Way, staff planted firm beside a hound. The same voice that had torn through the Vykenraven, commanding him to turn the dragon.
Viktor’s blood went cold.
Instinct surged—soldier, protector.
He caught Amerei at the waist and pressed her back to the wall, his body a shield.
“Stay here,” he rasped.
She called his name, but he was already moving, already crossing the room for the door—heart pounding, throat tightening.
He wrenched it open—
and Matteo stood there, breathing hard, urgency in his eyes.
“We’ve been followed.”