Chapter 21 #3
The words slipped out before she could stop them. She thought of the mate bond, of Eamon’s earlier remark—that Reynnar had claimed her. The memory still needled her in ways she hadn’t managed to work through yet.
Reynnar went very still. For a moment, something passed over his face—surprise, perhaps, or something more complex.
He set the clothes on the table, then crossed the room.
Before Elara quite understood his intent, his hands were in her hair, fingers threading gently through the curls at the back of her head.
He tipped her chin upward until she had no choice but to meet his eyes.
“It’s…an old Sídhe expression—to say someone is yours,” he said, thumb brushing along her temple as if he’d only just realized he was touching her.
“What I meant was simpler. You’re with me.
Untouchable.” A faint smile broke through.
“Unwise to provoke. You matter to me, Eilíara. But that doesn’t give me authority over you.
It never will. You choose where you stand. Always.”
Elara’s eyes fluttered shut. She leaned into the warmth of his hand before she could stop herself.
His words had found their way into the part of her that had spent years bracing for control—for possession, for the theft of autonomy she had only just begun to reclaim.
All her life, someone had owned a piece of her.
But he was promising something different—
That he would not take it; that he would never become another voice deciding what she was allowed to be.
It wasn’t the first time she’d needed to hear those words from him. He’d been saying as much since they returned to Tír na nóg, and he never seemed exasperated by it. If anything, there was a patience in him—as though he would go on reassuring her for the rest of her life, if that was what it took.
Elara swallowed. When she opened her eyes, he was watching her with an intensity that made the room feel smaller. “You matter to me, too.”
The words felt insufficient even as she spoke them. He was far more than that. He was the closest friend she had ever known, the first person in her life she had trusted without calculation.
Her best friend.
Reynnar’s smile deepened, the faint curve of a fang catching what little light lingered between them. He leaned in until his forehead rested against hers, eyes closing, breath drawing slow, as though this nearness was something he had been starved for.
The air between them changed. Each breath seemed to pull the other closer until their silence felt more physical than sound.
His scent wrapped around her—soap, smoke, cold wind—and beneath it, something wilder, rising from his skin and settling so completely that it felt as if she were standing inside it.
Elara drew a slow breath to steady herself, but the moment had already slipped beyond her control.
Warm air ghosted over her neck as Reynnar leaned closer.
She became acutely aware of every touch—his fingers in her hair, the scrape of callused skin at her nape, the rhythm of his breath as it deepened near her mouth.
Desire licked up her spine. She pressed her thighs together, the scratch of linen tightening across her breasts. The moment stretched thin, suspended to the point of breaking.
His fingers tightened in her hair. A roughness entered his breathing—heat sliding against her, the fine hairs on her skin rising until her head swam. And she knew, with a dizzying clarity, that he had felt the change in her—sensed it as easily as a predator catches blood on the wind.
It would have taken nothing to close the space between them. A tilt of her chin. A breath. The smallest surrender. The thought flickered through her, bright and dangerous, before she caught it—and let it go.
Neither of them moved, yet the air trembled with what they both denied.
When he finally loosened his hold, it was with a care that only made the moment harder to bear. His fingers slid slowly free of her curls, the warmth of his hand lingering near her cheek for a heartbeat—as if he’d almost changed his mind.
It hurt to look at him. It hurt more to look away.
Elara stayed where she was, painfully aware of the cool space he’d left behind—the soft crackle of the candle, the faint creak of the house shifting around them. She calmed herself and lifted her gaze.
Reynnar hadn’t gone far. He stood a few paces off, half turned toward the stairs, though his eyes remained fixed on her—on the line of her shoulders, the uneven rise of her breath beneath the thin fabric of her shirt, the strand of hair fallen across her cheek where his hand had been.
His throat worked as he swallowed, that same hand flexing once at his side.
At last, he spoke.
“Good night, Eilíara.”
Her throat felt tight. She swallowed before answering. “Good night.”
Reynnar inclined his head—a gesture almost formal after everything that had just passed between them—and crossed the room. The floorboards creaked softly under his weight as he started up the stairs.
Elara watched him go.
He didn’t look back.
The moment the sound of his footsteps faded, she turned back toward the map on the wall, already reaching for the flowers.