Chapter 19 #2
“I know that.” He nodded. “And I was going to tell you, but the more I got to know you, the more time we spent together, the more you challenged me and frustrated me...the more you began to step into who you are here...the more I realized, Ezer of Rendegard, that you could not be broken. But I could.” He swallowed, and his hands shook at his sides.
Pain swam through him, for his loss. For his mistakes.
For her pain, inflicted because of him. “I could be broken if I lost you. So, I hid the truth. And it was wrong of me, and I am a coward for it, and I will spend months, years – gods, whatever it takes – trying to make it up to you.”
His words were terrifying.
They were terrifying and honest and raw things...and they slid away from him, freeing him. Making it easier to breathe than it had been in days.
She stared up at him, through her curls and her scars...and she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Suddenly, he couldn’t even remember another face but hers. She was all he saw, the only woman he wanted to look at, the only woman he wanted to dream of and dream with.
And it would kill him to walk away from her.
But he’d do it, if it eased her own pain.
He’d do it, if it healed her.
He no longer gave a damn about himself.
She was what mattered.
She deserved the world, even if she didn’t want him in it.
“I have been lied to my entire life,” Ezer said. “And you expect me to forgive you? To fall into your arms and... and what then, Arawn? You’ll be king soon. And... we are not to be Matched.”
He took a deep breath. His hands went slack at his sides, like he was surrendering.
And he was.
He readied himself to turn away for good. To give her what she wanted.
But...
Just one last try.
“I do not expect anything from you,” he said.
“Never, Ezer. Your choices are your own to make. I am asking – I’ll beg if I have to – if you will forgive me.
If you will trust me again. Because I’ve lived my entire life in the Citadel afraid of making mistakes.
When we make them here...we pay. When we make them against the gods, our eternity is on the line. Our magic.”
He looked at his own hands. He frowned, as if he could feel the emptiness inside of them. But it was really her he was thinking of.
It was really the thought of never holding her again.
“I’m asking for grace.” His voice cracked. He was crying now, and he didn’t care. “Something I have never known. From anyone.”
For a moment, it was silent.
He swore she could hear his heart beating out of his chest.
“We shouldn’t do this,” she whispered. “It’s forbidden.”
“I know,” he said.
And he wanted to back away. He knew he should back away. It was what the laws required. It was what...he thought…Vivorr wanted.
But suddenly he found himself reaching for her. He found himself needing to borrow her strength, because he had none.
He ran a hand down her cheek, shivering at the feel of her. He traced the shape of her neck, down to her collarbone.
And he was on fire again, just like that.
Like she was the energy he’d needed. Like she was life, when he was on the verge of an emotional death.
And it was through pain, through desperation, that he offered up his final words.
“I cannot live my life, Ezer, not knowing what it was like to have you. I’ll pay the penance. I’ll pay it a thousand times, if it means one night together. One night...where we are free to love who we please.”
And there it was again, that word.
Love.
He loved her.
He loved her in a way that was honest and pure and true, and he wouldn’t dare think of it as anything but.
She wasn’t Soraya.
She never would be. And thank the gods for it, because this woman standing before him?
She was everything he’d ever missed in his life. She was freedom and fierceness and fire. Soraya had boasted those things, too, but she was burdened by a heart that was never his to take.
She hadn’t loved him.
She hadn’t wanted him. She had never looked at him the way Ezer did.
She stared up at him, and she was scarred and broken like he was, and she was so godsdamned beautiful his heart ached.
And he swore...
He swore, deep inside of him, his blood began to heat. And his magic winked open an eye again, as if it had caught a spark, and it wanted to come back to life on its own.
And that shifted something in him. In his heart, in his soul, he wondered:
How could anything forbidden breathe life to my fire like this?
He didn’t question it.
It had been so long since he’d really been alive...as if every fiber of his body had forgotten what it was like to feel things.
And perhaps he had never felt anything to begin with.
He wanted to reach out to her. He wanted to take her as his own, because by the gods, he could not ignore the feeling that she was his.
And he was hers.
But he held back.
He waited.
Until she reached behind her, suddenly, and opened the door to the catacombs. Cold air rushed out, stinging his tearstained cheeks. Then she laced her fingertips through the front of his cloak...and pulled him with her over the threshold.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
His heart was in his throat. He could barely breathe.
“I’m taking you someplace private,” she said, as she shut the door behind them, bathing them both in darkness.
He raised a pale brow, the way he always did when he looked at her. Like she was a question he’d happily spend the rest of his life trying to answer...and he would.
“So you can kill me?” he asked. And for some reason, a smile came across his lips.
His heart continued to pound.
And pound, and pound, and pound.
“No,” Ezer said. “So I can kiss you.”
And it was her that pulled him down. Her that chose him. And when their lips met...the cold was gone.
And there was only fire in its place.
Every part of him came undone at that kiss.
Every part of him turned molten, until he was burning, until he thought he might combust. The hunger swept over him as their lips met again, and their tongues met, too.
And he’d never been so desperate for her touch, her attention, her body pressed against his.
This was unlike the dreams he’d once had of a different woman in her place.
This was something new.
It was bold and it was beautiful, not a sunrise, but a sunset, bursting through him until he laid Soraya down. Until he scoured the stain of her from his heart, because this was Ezer...and no one else in the world could ever amount to this.
She wanted him.
She wanted him, in a way he doubted anyone ever would again.
He was hers, and finally, finally...she was his.
They kissed until he had her pressed up against the icy stone wall, but he didn’t feel the sting of it.
He felt only the need writhing within him for more.
So, he cradled her with his body until he pulled her into his arms, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, and suddenly there was too much space between them.
She started to fumble at the buttons on his tunic, almost frantically, as if she couldn’t wait to rip them apart. He gasped as she tore them open, and a few went flying into the darkness. He gasped again, as her fingertips slid across his skin.
He pulled away, trying to search her face in the shadows. He wanted to look at her, wanted to remember this moment, to burn it into his brain like a song and play it over and over again.
She pulled him back in, her lips on his, her fingers still clutching his shirt.
“I don’t know how—” Ezer whispered against him.
“Neither do I,” Arawn whispered back.
So, they learned together.
And it was beautiful.
And it was fleeting.
And it healed him and broke him and healed him all over again, as he finally learned what love felt like.
To give it...but also to receive it.
Everything he had was hers.
His heart.
His soul.
His fire.
And the choice was theirs to make.
Morning came.
And he woke to find her there in his arms, cradled against his chest. She fit him perfectly, as if she were made for him.
For a time, they spoke.
He gave no judgement when she talked about the gods.
There was nothing she could do, nothing she could say, that would ever make him want to turn away from this. They’d sealed their fates together. They’d given their bodies and their heats, and...
And she will never be yours.
The thought appeared suddenly. Achingly, inside of his mind.
He wanted to scream at it, fight it back into the darkness where it belonged, because it was the truth.
She was not his on the outside. Not to the watching world.
But on the inside...
He would burn forever for her.
So for now, he held her. And then he gave himself to her again...and again...until morning truly came.
He had to pull himself away from her, his body cold as he got dressed. He pressed a final kiss to her lips, swearing her taste to memory.
And he left the darkness behind.
He left her there with Six, exactly where she wanted to be.
He carried with him the weight of the deeds they had done, the laws he’d broken for her...the way he’d just denied one of the most vital vows a Sacred made to their gods.
It was worth it, he thought, as he stepped from the darkness, back into the light.
He stood taller, prouder, even though he knew he shouldn’t.
But for the first time in his life...
He didn’t give a damn about paying penance.