29. Tharos
TWENTY-NINE
THAROS
Ishould pull away. Should put distance between us, remind us both why this is dangerous. The King is weakened, but not gone. It’s still out there, still watching, still looking for any leverage it can find to crack my control.
Caring about someone is the ultimate leverage. I’ve known that since the binding took hold. Since I watched Seren burn and learned what love costs in a place like Briargrave.
I don’t pull away.
“Xela.”
“Don’t.” Her hand tightens on my arm. “Don’t tell me all the reasons this is a bad idea. I know the reasons. I’ve been listing them in my head since the ravine, since the Heartgrove, since you broke free of the King’s control because I asked you to. I know what the risks are.”
“Then why—”
“Because I’m tired of being smart.” Her voice cracks on the last word.
Just enough to show me the vulnerability beneath the steel.
“Tired of weighing every risk like the answer is always retreat. Where has it gotten me? Alone in a forest that wants to eat me. Pretending I don’t feel anything because feeling things is dangerous. ”
She’s shaking. Slightly, almost imperceptibly, but I can feel it through the hand on my arm. I don’t think she knows she’s doing it.
“You’re not alone now.” I say it before thinking. “For whatever that’s worth.”
“It’s worth more than you know.”
She moves.
Or I move. Later, I won’t be able to remember who closed the distance first. What I’ll remember is the sudden heat of her body against mine, the fierce press of her mouth, the taste of blood on her lips from where she must have bitten them during the fight.
The kiss isn’t gentle. Nothing between us is gentle.
She presses forward and I meet her halfway, my hands finding her waist, her shoulders, tangling in her hair.
She pulls me closer, nails digging into the scarred skin of my arms, and the pain is sharp and sweet and exactly what I need.
I’ve forgotten what this feels like. The hunger that has nothing to do with the King.
The wanting that comes from somewhere deeper than survival.
Her mouth opens beneath mine and I drink her in like water after drought. My hands slide down her back, careful of her wounds but desperate for contact. She makes a sound—half gasp, half groan—and arches into me, and the last thread of restraint I was holding snaps.
I flip us. Her back hits the bone-studded wall and she doesn’t care, just wraps her legs around my waist and pulls me closer.
I can feel every inch of her pressed against me, every curve and angle, every hitch in her breath as I kiss a path down her throat.
She smells like blood and sweat and that clean sharp thing underneath, and I want to drown in it.
Want to consume her the way the forest consumes everything, except I want to worship instead of destroy.
“Tharos.” My name on her lips. Rough. Wanting. “Tharos.”
I pull back. Just far enough to see her face—flushed, eyes dark, lips swollen from kissing. She’s breathing hard. So am I. The hollow feels too small, too hot, charged with the gravity of what we’re starting.
“That was—” she starts.
“The King will use this.” My voice comes out rough, abraded by want. “Anything between us—it will find a way to exploit it. Use you to get to me. Use me to hurt you.”
“I know.”
“Then we should stop. Be smart about this. Keep our distance until—”
“Until what?” She grabs my face, forces me to look at her.
Her palms are calloused against my jaw, warm and real and impossibly alive.
“Until the Consortium comes back? Until the King finds another way to attack? Until one of us dies in this forest and the other is left wondering what could have been?”
“Until we’re not in immediate danger might be a good start.”
“We’re never going to not be in danger. Not here.
Not ever.” Her thumbs trace my cheekbones, and I have to fight not to lean into the touch like a starving man.
“I’ve spent my whole life caring about consequences.
About staying smart, staying safe, never wanting anything that could hurt me.
” Her voice drops. “Maybe I’m done being safe. ”
“I know exactly what I’m saying.” She pulls my face down to hers, and the kiss this time is slower.
Deeper. A promise instead of a demand. “I’m saying I want you.
I’m saying I’m done pretending I don’t. And I’m saying that if the King wants to use that against us, let it try.
We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it. ”
I want to argue. Want to list all the reasons this is dangerous, all the ways it could destroy us both. But her mouth is on mine again, and her hands are sliding beneath my armor, and the part of my brain that deals with consequences has gone very, very quiet.
We sink to the floor of the hollow. The bones press into my back—finger bones, jaw sections, the remnants of everyone Briargrave has claimed—and I don’t care.
All I care about is the woman in my arms, the woman who fought for me when everyone else ran, the woman who’s looking at me like I’m worth keeping.
Her fingers find the clasps of my armor. I help her, shrugging out of the leather and bone, letting it fall beside us. Her eyes trace my scars—the bark-ridges on my arms, the old wounds layered over decades—and there’s no disgust in her expression. No fear. Just hunger that matches my own.
“The burns on your side.” I manage to form words, barely. “We shouldn’t—”
“I’ve had worse.” She’s already working on her own armor, pulling the damaged leather over her head. The bandages beneath are stark white against her tan skin, the bruises spreading in dark flowers across her ribs. “And I didn’t do all that stitching just to sit around being careful.”
“You’re going to be the death of me.”
“You keep saying that like it’s a bad thing.”
I kiss her again. This time my hands learn the geography of her body—the dip of her waist, the strength of her shoulders, the places where scars tell stories she hasn’t shared with me yet.
She arches into my touch, her own hands exploring in return, mapping the terrain of a body that hasn’t been touched with tenderness in longer than I want to admit.
This is a mistake. The King is watching—it never stops watching—and tomorrow we’ll both regret this in the cold light of day. But tonight, in this hollow full of bones, with her warmth pressed against me and her mouth whispering my name—
Tonight, I don’t care about tomorrow.
Tonight, I just want this.