Chapter 9 Torin
TORIN
Isaid I’d rather drown. I’ve never told a bigger lie.
I stay on my side of the grotto because crossing that distance would mean admitting I was wrong. Would mean facing the truth I can feel pulsing through the bond with every heartbeat—that I don’t want to drown. I want to live. I want her.
But wanting has always been dangerous.
The bioluminescent moss casts shifting shadows across Zara’s face as she settles against the far wall. She’s trying to sleep, I think. Or at least pretending to. Her breathing is too controlled, too deliberate. She’s as awake as I am, feeling the same ache where the bond stretches between us.
I told her I’d rather die than accept this. And she looked at me with those amber eyes and saw right through me.
“You’re lying,” she said. Not angry. Not accusing. Just observing the truth I couldn’t hide.
She’s right. I am lying. To her. To myself. To the memory of everything I thought I was before she fell from the sky and shattered my carefully constructed world.
The bond pulses with pain—a physical ache in my chest that has nothing to do with the sealed wound on my arm. This is what rejection feels like. What denying what we are does to us both. The connection doesn’t disappear when I refuse to acknowledge it. It just hurts.
I close my eyes and try to sleep. Try to pretend morning will bring clarity. Try to believe I made the right choice by pushing her away.
But all I can think about is the kiss.
The way she tasted like thunderstorms. The way her lightning danced across my scales and felt like coming home. The way every carefully built wall I’d constructed came crashing down the moment her lips touched mine.
And the look on her face when I pulled away. Not just hurt. Understanding. Like she knew I was running from the best thing that ever happened to me and was willing to let me run until I found my way back.
How is she so brave?
I think of Mira. She was brave too. Brave enough to dream about the sky when everyone told her to stay in the deep. Brave enough to risk everything for a glimpse of something more. Brave enough to keep reaching even when reaching killed her.
What would she think of me now? Cowering in a cave, too afraid to reach for what I want because I might change. Might become someone different. Might lose the identity I’ve clung to like armor against a world that keeps taking things from me.
She’d be ashamed. She’d tell me to stop being an idiot. She’d probably hit me and tell me the sky is right there, waiting, and all I have to do is be brave enough to reach.
Gods, I miss her.
And gods, I’m tired of being afraid.
I open my eyes and look at Zara. Really look at her.
She’s beautiful in the moss-light—all golden skin and dark hair and the subtle glow of suppressed lightning beneath her skin.
She came here alone to prove herself. Fell from the sky and nearly died.
Let me bind her, drag her through tunnels that terrified her, trusted me when she had every reason not to.
She’s the bravest person I’ve ever met. And she chose me.
The bond knows what I’m about to do before I consciously decide. It hums with anticipation as I push to my feet. Trembles with hope as I cross the grotto. Settles into something warm and right as I kneel beside her.
Her eyes open. She doesn’t look surprised.
“I lied,” I say. The words come out rough. Raw. True. “I don’t want to drown.”
“I know.” Her voice is gentle. Patient. Everything I don’t deserve.
“I’m terrified.” The confession spills out like water through a broken dam.
“I’m terrified of losing myself. Of becoming someone I don’t recognize.
Of caring about you more than I care about duty, about honor, about everything I’ve spent my life believing matters.
” I reach for her hand, and she lets me take it.
Lightning sparks at the contact, warm and welcoming.
“But I’m more terrified of pushing you away.
Of spending the rest of my life wondering what we could have been if I’d just been brave enough to reach. ”
She sits up slowly, her amber eyes never leaving mine. “So reach.”
“If I do this—if I choose you—there’s no going back. The bond will complete. We’ll be changed. Connected in ways neither of us fully understands.”
“I know.”
“Caspian will never forgive me. I’ll be outcast. A traitor to everything I was raised to believe.”
“I know.”
“And I still might lose myself. Might wake up one day and not recognize the person I’ve become.”
She cups my cheek, and the tenderness in the gesture breaks something in my chest. “Or you might wake up and realize you’ve finally found who you were always meant to be.”
The truth of it settles over me like falling water. Maybe I’ve been drowning my whole life and just didn’t know it. Maybe the sky isn’t poison—isolation is. Maybe reaching for something different isn’t betrayal—it’s the bravest thing I could do.
Maybe Mira understood that all along.
“I choose you,” I whisper. “Not because of the bond. Because you argue and challenge and make me want to be better. Because you’re fierce and brilliant and you see me—not the Sentinel, not the dutiful son, just Torin. And I would rather be an outcast with you than a hero without you.”
Her breath catches. “Say that again.”
“I choose you, Zara Stormwright. I choose this. I choose us.”
She kisses me like I’ve given her the sky.
This kiss is different from the first.
The first was desperation and denial, all heat and no certainty. This one is choice—deliberate, frightening, and so right it makes my chest ache.
Her mouth opens under mine with a soft sound, and the bond answers like a living thing, unfurling between us. I taste salt and rain and the faint metallic tang of lightning. My hands slide to her waist, pulling her closer until her body fits against mine in the way it always has in my dreams.
She trembles. Not from fear. From want.
“Torin,” she breathes, my name turning into something sacred.
“I’m here.” I press my forehead to hers, breathing her in. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
Her eyes search mine, amber bright in the moss-light. Vulnerable and fierce in the same breath. “I’ve never done this before,” she admits quietly. “Not like this. Not with someone who matters.”
The confession punches straight through me.
“Neither have I.” My voice comes rough. Honest. “I’ve had bodies. I’ve had convenience. But I’ve never had this. Someone I’d choose over everything.”
Her smile wobbles, soft with wonder. “Then we’ll figure it out together.”
Together. The word reshapes the air around us.
I kiss her again, slow enough that I can feel every part of her deciding, every part of her leaning in.
Her hands slide into my hair, nails scraping my scalp in a way that sends a shiver down my spine.
Lightning crackles along her skin, sparks jumping to my mouth.
My water magic instinctively rises, cool and steady, smoothing the sting into heat.
A balance. A storm held in a current.
I pull back just far enough to speak against her lips. “Tell me if you want me to stop.”
She swallows. “I don’t.”
“Tell me if something hurts.”
“It won’t,” she says, and then, softer, like a truth she’s gifting me: “Not with you.”
I help her out of her damp shirt, careful of her healing shoulder. The fabric catches for a second on the joint where her wing emerges and she hisses—not pain, more sensation. I freeze immediately.
“Zara?”
“I’m okay,” she breathes, and her hands slide down my chest as if she needs the contact to anchor herself. “Just... sensitive.”
I nod, pulse pounding. “Show me.”
Her jaw tightens, then she guides my hand to the base of her wing. The place where feathers give way to skin, where tendons flex beneath the surface. Where the bond hums louder, eager.
I touch her there with the barest pressure.
She gasps, back arching, lightning flaring bright enough to paint the stone. The sound she makes goes straight to my gut.
“That,” she whispers. “That feels... unfair.”
I lean in to kiss the corner of her mouth. “Neither is what you’re doing to my gills.”
Her fingers sweep along the soft, hidden slits at my neck. I shudder hard, throat tightening. It’s not pain—it’s pleasure sharp enough to make me dizzy.
“Then we’re even,” she murmurs, eyes gleaming.
We shed the rest of our clothes between kisses and quiet laughter that turns breathless too quickly.
Every new inch of skin is a revelation. The warmth of her against the cool of me.
The difference in our textures, our scars, our impossible anatomy.
Proof that this should not exist—and that it does anyway.
She watches me like I’m a miracle and a weapon all at once.
I drag my mouth down her throat, tasting the pulse there. Down the curve of her collarbone. Over the swell of her breast. Her nipples pebble under my tongue and she jerks, a sound breaking from her that makes my vision go white at the edges.
“Torin,” she warns—but it’s not a warning to stop.
I lift my head, meeting her gaze. “Still with me?”
“Yes.” She answers too fast, then laughs shakily. “Gods, yes.”
Good.
I lower her carefully to the stone, using a curl of water to soften the cold edge, to warm the surface under her back. Her eyes widen as the magic slides beneath her like a heated tide.
“Show-off,” she breathes.
“Only for you,” I say, and I mean it.
She lies there in the moss-glow like a storm given skin—wings half-spread, feathers catching the light, lightning tracing her in shifting patterns. Beautiful doesn’t begin to cover it. Mine doesn’t either—not yet—but the thought is there, fierce and protective.
I brace myself over her, kissing her slow again, letting her feel my weight, letting her decide she wants it. Her thighs open under mine, inviting, and the scent of her hits me—warm and sweet and electric.
My body reacts instantly. Hard, aching, desperate.