43 #2
My face turns numb. I don’t tell him what really happened that day, because if this alone was enough to make him look for them, I dare not imagine what the truth would drive him to do.
‘I lost my mind when I heard.’ His voice lowers until I have to lean towards him.
‘Did you… find them?’ That’s not the question I want to ask.
A coldness winds around my throat. I know that stillness. I know what comes after it.
He gives me a solemn gaze. ‘I found them.’
The unease bleeds into awareness. Of the size of him sitting cross-legged in front of me. The strength in his hands, the blood on them. The man who could hold me and kiss me like no one ever had but still be capable of becoming the thing nightmares warn each other about.
I glance down at those hands now. He notices my thoughts latching onto them. Nothing goes past him.
His fist curls. For a second, he simply lets me look.
‘I didn’t kill them,’ he says at long last.
Air sticks in my throat and I feel almost ashamed that it had been the first thought to cross my mind.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’
He swallows once. ‘I wanted to.’
I wish he had lied.
His gaze shifts towards the trees and the severe line of his profile disappears into shadow. ‘Their absence wouldn’t shake anything loose, it wouldn’t have kept you safe. Cromwell would hire others.’ His hand flexes once against his thigh. ‘I broke a hand, threatened worse.’
My jaw strains at how easily the words leave him.
The same man who makes me feel safe now talks about inflicting pain as though it belongs to the same ordinary language.
‘Killing them, though… it would have removed two men and warned Cromwell that I knew. Leaving them alive bought us time and preserved the lie that you had travelled willingly. It also meant he would not immediately send replacements. So I made sure they understood what talking would cost them – then paid them more to keep quiet.’
My grip on the blanket locks.
He hadn’t lost control – that’s the admirable part. Progress. But if he had, it would have been almost easier to understand than listening to him measuring the violence, weighing what each broken bone might buy him. Then stopping precisely where the calculation told him to.
This is the Elias I fear.
‘“The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength,”’ he says, more to himself. ‘Marcus Aurelius.’
This should not absolve him, but it reveals the distinction that I’ve missed: his calm does not mean the violence came easily. It means he remained present inside it enough to choose.
Knot by knot, my thoughts begin to loosen. I don’t ask about Isak and Melody. He will tell me when he’s ready. I don’t ask about Melody’s accusation either, though it sits between us like something waiting to explode.
But one truth surfaces regardless…
It wouldn’t have kept you safe, he said.
‘You didn’t really kidnap me to torture me, did you?’ I ask quietly.
His eyes lift to mine slowly.
When they do, something detonates in my chest.
‘I took you,’ he corrects. ‘Whatever danger existed, it still does. I’m still… wrong.’ His jaw realigns.
I pull the blanket closer, but it does nothing to disperse the bite of the sudden cold that curls beneath my ribs.
‘Stop saying that. You’re far from it.’
‘There was little time,’ he starts, and this is the first time he has allowed himself to speak about it.
‘But that is not the whole excuse. If I had told you, you would have asked questions, called Conall, involved others.’ His mouth twists.
‘I decided my judgement mattered more than your consent. Control was faster than trust, and control was the language I believed in.’
‘Arsehole.’ I shove at his chest lightly.
He accepts the first strike. The second is lighter. When my hand rises again, he catches it – and all the remaining pieces stop falling off my soul.
Then his fingers loosen. His thumb grazes the soft part of my skin at the wrist. And I close the distance between us. He accepts me into his arms, crushing the blanket between us.
‘The airport was one day,’ I say, still unsure if I should push this. ‘What about everything afterwards? The blizzard and the rules and my phone?’
He clears his throat. I can already feel the wall rebuilding itself.
‘Why did you need me to hate you?’ I ask.
‘I intended to send you home once Cromwell was dealt with.’ His focus settles on the ground. Two whole beats pass before he speaks again. ‘Hatred would have made you take survival seriously.’
I look up, watching his lips draw tight together while his gaze escapes towards the tree line again.
‘I used what Arthur taught me. If you learnt to survive me, you would survive this place and anyone Cromwell sent.’
His grip firms around me once, then loosens, as if he catches himself holding me too hard.
‘I wasn’t supposed to need you to understand.
Or care whether you hated me. It was my name that pulled you into their orbit.
’ His mouth brushes the crown of my head in something that isn’t quite a kiss.
More a failure to keep distance. ‘But you kept looking at me like there might still be a man underneath.’
I try to separate from him. I want to look up at him as he speaks, but he holds me tight, as though he’s unable to let go.
‘You’re not wrong.’ I press myself harder into him. Hating him. Needing him. Understanding too much and not nearly enough. ‘You should have trusted me with the truth.’
‘I know.’
‘No…’ I pull back just enough to meet his eyes, and this time he lets me slip out of his hold. ‘Don’t say it like punishment. Say it like you mean to do better.’
Pale eyes hold mine. Starlight drowns in them. So do I.
‘I should have trusted you with the truth,’ he reiterates. ‘And I will do better.’
It fixes nothing. The months behind us remain exactly what they were.
But the truth enters places his lies had occupied and forces them apart by a fraction.
My anger stays where it deservedly is, too.
Beside it, unwillingly, sits the relief of finally understanding some of what came after he took me.
I lift onto my knees before sense can talk me out of it and curl my fingers into the front of his jacket.
‘You’re important to me,’ I murmur.
His gaze moves over me slowly. From the tangled hair slipping from beneath my hood to the cold-reddened line of my cheek, down to my mouth, then along the curve of my jaw as if he is committing it all to memory.
Dark lashes lower over all that azure, and the breath between us thins to nothing.
His hand rises towards my face. I meet him halfway, tipping my chin into his palm.
Then he takes my mouth with his.
The way he kisses me makes the forest fall away first. The cold withdraws; the fear follows. The heat of his mouth and the resting violence of a man trying not to give more than I can take is the only thing that matters in this moment.
Yes, he is dangerous.
His past is worse.
It’s full of doors I have not opened and truths that may yet cut me.
But for a little while, in this breath, in this single heartbeat, with his hands at my face and my fingers against him, I let fiction become kinder than reality.
He is mine.
I am his.
And in the brief mercy of this kiss, it feels like forever.
A pointed cough cuts through the moment.
Our chins aim towards the tent.
A little way off, Sunna, Inga and the cousins are now gathered near the trees, pretending with spectacular failure not to be watching us. They whisper behind their hands, bite down on grins and look entirely too invested.
Elias and I groan at the same time.
I drop my forehead against his chest. ‘What are we going to do about… that?’
He sighs so deeply it moves through both of us, then looks past my shoulder at the cluster of women still arranging our future.
A full set of heartbeats passes.
‘I hear Iceland is nice this time of year,’ he mutters.
The chuckle bubbles in me first. Then it starts in his chest. Low, reluctant, but unfortunately, catchy. It turns into something warmer than the wool around my shoulders or even the man in my arms.
I tilt my head back to look at him. ‘We’re not running any further.’
His smile lightens but doesn’t disappear entirely.
Then it hits. ‘They’re not still expecting a wedding tonight, are they?’
His amusement vanishes. ‘No, the groom has seen the bride. That’s bad, I assume.’
‘We need to tell them, Elias.’
Colour leaves his face as if the words have sucked it dry.
I kiss him once, briefly, softly, but he doesn’t respond. When I pull away, he is still staring at me for a moment. His mouth opens, then closes again around whatever almost came out.
In the end, he only nods towards the bonfire. ‘I’ll talk to them.’
Part of me wants to press him for whatever still refuses to come out. But too many truths have already been laid bare beneath this sky tonight.
Rising to his feet, he offers me his hand without closing his fingers around mine.
Together we move out from the shelter of the trees and towards the women who are undoubtedly plotting another kidnapping.