47. Silas #3
It took every ounce of me not to fall to my knees, not to crawl to her and confess. But there were so many things I wanted to tell her, so many things she deserved to know.
“The princes are scared of me because they don’t know how much power I have. They can’t feel it.” The words were out before I could stop them. I stared at her, immediately regretting it, immediately wanting her to say something, anything, because the silence was worse than whatever came next.
She stood and fuck me the nightgown somehow got shorter as she walked, thighs brushing together with each step. “And you felt the need to share that with me tonight?”
“Apparently.”
Syneca pressed one finger to the center of my chest and pushed. “How drunk are you?”
“Sobering by the second,” I lied, staring at her mouth.
She thought about it for a moment, her head tilting the way it did when she was pulling something apart. “Why can’t they feel it?”
“That’s a secret.”
She tilted her head the other direction. “I’m a very good secret keeper.”
That was true. I’d watched her keep the biggest secret in Fuerlis without once letting it slip. I nodded.
She slid her hands up my chest, slow and deliberate, and I felt exactly what she wanted through every layer between us.
And fuck, I wanted to give it to her. Not the way she thought.
Not just the obvious. I wanted to give her mornings.
And nights. And simple conversations. I wanted to give her a version of me that had never made a single bargain, that could stand in a doorway and simply say yes without it costing her something.
I wanted to be a man instead of a debt she was bound to.
“Don’t you want to tell me?”
I nodded again, my hands itching to grab her, to pull her against me, to feel her body against mine. I wanted to tell her everything. Give her everything. Every truth I’d been locking down since the moment I understood what she meant to me. Which was exactly why I couldn’t say anything.
She needed someone who could give her everything without conditions attached.
I couldn’t do that. Whatever I wanted in this doorway, whatever was pressing against my good sense, it wasn’t fair. It would never be fair. She’d been through enough without adding me to the list of things that had used her up and left her standing.
The right thing was simple. It was just hard.
“No. No, I just wanted to say goodnight,” I said, my voice thick with the kind of restraint that was going to fucking kill me.
Her expression softened, giving just enough that I felt it through the bond before I could shut it out, that small flicker of pain that gutted me completely. I’d hurt her again. Because she wanted me to stay as much as I wanted to.
I stepped back from the frame debating doing something I couldn’t come back from.
The right thing was simple.
I just wasn’t doing it tonight.
One more night. That was all. One more night of this before I found the spine to end it properly, to draw the line I should have drawn months ago.
I could do that. I could give myself that much and no more.
Because I was in love with her. Had been for longer than I could honestly account for.
I let myself sit with the words I’d been too fucking stubborn to admit to myself.
“Can I stay?”
She didn't say yes. Those perfect lips parted and she moved back from the doorway, and that was enough.
The shift came easy, it always did with her, some part of me too comfortable in her presence to bother with the usual effort.
The world dropped and widened the way it did when I had four legs and a wingspan and considerably less to answer for.
I crossed the room, claws quiet against the floor, and jumped.
The mattress dipped. I turned twice, the way I always did, purely out of stubbornness, and settled into the space I’d been claiming since before either of us had bothered to question it. Left side. Against the wall. Her warmth already radiating into the space between us.
Syneca looked at me for a moment before turning off the lamp with a spell and crawling in.
The dark settled around us and she pulled the blanket up.
Her confusion brushed the bond first. It was quiet, almost careful, then softened when she stopped resisting whatever this was becoming.
Her breathing slowed. Her ease sank into me like it belonged there.
I shouldn’t have fucking stayed.
I’d seen her covered in ash and blood and other people’s magic.
I’d seen her on her knees in a nymph’s chamber hating me.
None of it had ever dimmed her. She was the brightest thing in every room she’d ever walked into.
She had no idea I’d spent every one of our years together pretending not to notice so I’d never have to admit I’d memorized her.
I lay in the dark and felt what I meant to her moving through the bond like something inevitable and I understood with a clarity that was almost cruel that I had run out of room to pretend otherwise.
I could deal with it tomorrow.
Tonight I let myself have it, because I loved her. Which meant I needed the only solution I had left.