Chapter 25
The guest suite glowed with the deep warmth of the hearth.
Firelight moved across the carved wooden paneling and gathered within every shadow, giving the room the appearance of breathing around Veya. Dax had rebuilt the fire before leaving her, and the flames now burned high enough to cast a dark orange glow across the bed.
He stopped outside the door and knocked.
Veya did not answer immediately.
When her voice came, it was strained.
“Dax?”
“Yes.”
“Come in.”
He opened the door and found her twisted across the bed as though she had spent the time since his departure trying to escape her own skin.
One leg was bent beneath her while the other hung over the edge of the mattress. Her damp hair clung to her face and throat, and sweat caught the firelight across her pale skin. The loose sleep shirt had twisted around her hips, while small tremors continued moving through her abdomen and thighs.
Dax closed the door behind him.
She had not settled after all.
He crossed the room carefully, giving her enough warning to recognize him before he approached the bed.
“Veya.”
Her eyes opened slowly. Her pupils remained wide enough to darken most of the green, but she found him more quickly than she had in the library.
“I cannot make it stop.”
Her voice had become hoarse from fighting herself.
Dax sat on the edge of the mattress without touching her.
“Tell me what is happening.”
“Everything feels too close.” She pressed one hand against her stomach. “My skin hurts, my body will not settle, and every time I close my eyes, it gets worse.”
He watched another tremor move through her.
Rhen’s blood had ended the violent tether flare, but it had left her senses raw and overstimulated. Dax did not know whether this was part of the transition, an aftereffect of the blood, or a consequence unique to whatever Rhen had created.
He refused to pretend certainty merely because she needed an answer.
“I do not know exactly what is happening,” he said.
Veya gave a broken laugh.
“That is reassuring.”
“I could invent something mystical and confident if that would help.”
“It would not.”
“I suspected as much.”
She shifted again, and her fingers dug into the sheets.
Dax caught her wrist before her nails broke the skin of her palm.
“You are hurting yourself.”
“I need something, but I do not know what.”
His grip remained firm enough to stop the damage without becoming a restraint.
“What hurts, and what do you want?”
Veya stared at him.
“I do not know the difference anymore.”
“Then we wait until you do.”
Her expression tightened.
“You make that sound simple.”
“It is not simple.” Dax released her wrist. “It is necessary.”
Veya looked away, anger and humiliation moving across her face.
“When you are here, it is better.”
Dax went still.
“That may be because you trust me not to force anything.”
“It is not only that.”
Her fingers found his wrist after he released her. The touch was uncertain at first, but it remained deliberate.
Dax looked down at her hand.
“Veya.”
“I wanted you before the library.”
His gaze lifted.
She swallowed, even though the motion was no longer necessary.
“I wanted you in the garden. I wanted you when you sat beside me and did not treat me like something dangerous or stupid. I wanted you before Rhen gave me his blood.”
Dax’s control tightened around him.
He had wanted to hear those words.
That did not mean he could trust the moment without question.
“You are still in pain.”
“Yes.”
“Your body is still reacting to something neither of us understands.”
“Yes.”
“And you still want me.”
Veya held his gaze.
“Yes.”
The directness of the answer moved through him with enough force to strip away every easy joke he might have used as protection.
Dax leaned closer, slowly enough that she could stop him before their faces touched.
“Tell me what you want now.”
“You.”
“Not relief.”
“You.”
“Not someone close enough to make the pain quieter.”
Her fingers tightened around his wrist.
“You, Dax.”
He gave her every opportunity to retreat.
Veya closed the distance herself.
The kiss began more softly than the first, but there was nothing uncertain in it. Her mouth moved against his with chosen hunger rather than blind desperation, and Dax answered before restraint could disguise what he felt.
One hand slid into her damp hair while the other settled against the mattress beside her hip. He did not pin her or pull her beneath him, but the effort required to maintain that distance rapidly became its own form of pain.
Veya’s fingers moved from his wrist to his shoulders.
She drew him nearer.
Dax deepened the kiss, tasting the lingering trace of Rhen’s blood and hating that anything connected to his brother remained between them.
Beneath it, however, was Veya herself: the sharpness of her anger, the stubbornness with which she demanded choice, and the warmth she had allowed him to see only in brief, reluctant flashes.
This belonged to them.
The tether had not created it.
Rhen had no place inside it.
Veya’s body arched toward him as another tremor passed through her. The movement broke through Dax’s focus and reminded him that pain still threaded through her desire.
He ended the kiss and rested his forehead against hers.
Veya made a frustrated sound.
“Do not stop.”
“I have to.”
“You asked what I wanted.”
“I know.”
“Then believe me.”
“I do believe you.” His voice had become rough. “I believe you wanted me before tonight, and I believe you want me now.”
Her eyes searched his.
“Then what is the problem?”
“I want you too much to use this.”
Veya went still.
Dax lifted his head enough to look at her properly.
“I will not take something from you while your body is in pain and neither of us understands why. I will not allow Rhen’s tether, his blood, or anything else he did to become part of the reason you end up beneath me.”
The bluntness brought colorless heat into her expression.
“You have thought about me beneath you.”
“I have been trying very hard not to.”
Despite everything, the corner of her mouth moved.
Dax’s thumb brushed once along her jaw before he forced his hand away.
“When this settles, ask me again.”
“I already did that.”
“Then ask a third time.”
“You are impossible.”
“I have been told.”
Another wave moved through her body, and the humor disappeared. Veya curled inward with a sharp breath, one hand closing around Dax’s sleeve.
He shifted farther onto the bed without lying over her.
“What do you need?”
“Do not leave.”
Dax hesitated only long enough to make sure the request was clear.
“I will stay.”
He moved against the headboard and allowed her to choose the distance between them. Veya shifted toward him until her shoulder rested against his side, and her fingers remained twisted in the fabric of his shirt.
Dax placed one arm around her only after she settled there.
The contact was not intended to cure the pain or satisfy any supernatural demand. It offered no magical solution and promised nothing beyond the next few minutes.
It was simply what she had asked for.
When another tremor passed through her, Dax remained beside her and allowed her to hold on. He did not kiss her again, although every part of him remembered the shape of her mouth.
Veya gradually relaxed against him.
“You really want me,” she murmured after a while.
Dax looked down at her.
“That should not sound so surprising.”
“I have had a difficult week.”
“You have had an exceptionally poor introduction to immortality.”
Her faint laugh moved against his chest.
Dax remained with her as the fire settled lower and the worst of the tremors began to ease. He had entered the room furious with Rhen and left the training center knowing exactly how little his brother valued the woman now resting against him.
That knowledge changed nothing about what Dax felt.
Rhen saw currency.
Dax saw Veya.
When the next wave came, she reached for him by choice, and he stayed.