Chapter 38 #2
He fisted his hands. “I’ve spent my entire life learning how to bend my affinity to my will, not the other way around. You’ve seen what can happen when I lose even the smallest thread of control.”
Sabine remembered the moment at their vow celebration with harrowing clarity. She scuffed the stone with the toe of her boot, trying to act offhand, casual, as if her own nerves had not been twitching like plucked wire since they entered the Vault. “Yes, but… I stopped it, didn’t I?”
“And what if you can’t do it again?”
“We have no reason to believe—”
“I would never, not in this life or the next, forgive myself for hurting you.”
She stepped toward him, close enough that she could see the flecks of silver around his iris, the faint line of an old break at the bridge of his nose. “I trust you.” Her hand hovered near his, not quite touching. “You told me to do that, remember?”
Azrian stared down at his fists, as if appraising them. “With this, I don’t trust myself.”
As if he were a wounded animal, she approached him slowly, deliberately.
With gentle persistence, she pried his fingers apart one by one, and though he did not help, neither did he resist. She trailed her fingertips on the calluses along the inside of his knuckles.
“You have more control in your thumb than most people do in their whole body. Let go of just some of it, and let us try.”
He groaned, exasperated, and tipped his head back, exposing the line of his throat. “Sabine, I cannot think when you—”
“Then don’t think.” She squeezed his hand. “ Feel. What you know is not working anymore, so let’s try something different.”
Azrian was silent, but he didn’t attempt to dissuade her anymore.
He stepped to the center of the chalk ring, every movement precise, economical.
She wondered whether he’d always been this way, or if the weight of his affinity had pressed every excess from him, leaving only the marble statue of a man and none of the warmth.
Then she thought of his hands in her hair. The ghost of his breath on her lips. The phantom sensation of his pleasure when she…
No. Absolutely not. Not the time to think of all of the ways her new husband might indeed be warm.
“Fine,” he said. “But if anything happens—”
Sabine cut him off, sudden and sharp. “It won’t. We shall make it work.” She smiled, or tried to, but her lips felt caked together.
She joined him, leaving a breath’s width between their toes. He offered his palms, and she placed hers in them, threading their fingers together.
She was prepared for pain, for the cold shock of magic gone awry, but what she got was a heat so intense it felt like it could sear her straight to the bone.
This time, she did not close her eyes. She watched him, and he watched her, the two of them anchored only by the precarious grip of flesh and will.
With their free hands, they summoned the threads. When he looked as though he was attempting to school his own magic into order, Sabine squeezed his hand harder.
“Let it go. Let it flow where it wants to.”
Azrian clenched his teeth, but he did as instructed, allowing the ashen threads of his magic to billow higher, wider. They sought out Sabine’s like a starved man to water, and Azrian’s eyebrows furrowed as he attempted to rein the threads back in. She gave him a small tug in warning.
His Destruction finally found her own magic, and although it had seemed wild and uncontrolled in its approach, the joining was soft and reverent, both magics twining together, finding space for each other, melting into one another as though they’d always meant to exist as one.
For a second, Sabine felt her own pulse match his. The magics converged in the air between them as a helix, delicate as the threads of a spider’s web.
“We’re doing it,” she whispered, though it was more a thought than a sound.
“Don’t let go.”
Sabine realized, with a bolt of shock, that it was more plea than command.
She nodded, her chin barely moving.
The sensation built, but it was not the animal panic of before. It was more like the moment a string was plucked. The magics pulsed together, stronger and stronger, until a wave washed over both of them.
Sabine’s vision blurred. The Vault around them faded.
She saw flashes: herself as a child, holding Liora; Azrian as a boy, alone in a library, face pressed to the cold glass of a window; herself teaching, the pride in a student’s triumph; Azrian at a funeral in a rain-soaked city, mouth set against the world.
The memories were not hers, but they were not entirely his, either. They existed in the liminal space.
She gasped, but didn’t let go. Instead, she squeezed tighter.
The magics surged and spiraled. There was a flash of light, a cascade of sparkle in the point of contact where her threads turned his into molten gold.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the magic dissipated, leaving just the two of them.
Sabine let herself adjust to the slow return of sensation; the tingling in her fingers, the ache in her jaw, the mad flutter of her heart. She was acutely aware of Azrian’s body, the way his chest rose and fell in ragged time with her own.
“Are you hurt?” she managed.
He shook his head. “No. Just… disoriented.”
Their hands were still interlaced, her fingers locked around his with a desperation she would’ve denied under any other circumstance. She forced herself to loosen her grip, but didn’t let go.
The rawness in his expression, so often buried under layers of coldness, struck her speechless. A bead of sweat rolled down his temple, catching on the stubble along his jaw. Without thinking, Sabine reached out and brushed it away. His breath stopped. So did hers.
It would have been so easy to close the distance. But Sabine hesitated, the weight of what they’d just shared pressing in from all sides. For one wild heartbeat, she thought he might do it, might lean in and erase the last inch between them.
He caught her hand in his and brought it to his lips. He did not kiss her skin—only held it there, against his mouth, as if afraid his own body might betray him.
“Sabine,” he said, her name smaller than she’d ever heard it.
She wanted to say something clever, to reclaim the upper hand. But she found herself asking, “Do you think it will always be like this?”
Azrian’s lips grazed the tips of her fingers as he spoke. “I don’t see how it could be different, with you.”
A laugh escaped her, wobbly and broken, but real. “You’re supposed to lie and tell me it will get better.”
He raised his gaze to hers. “You once told me you find no comfort in gilded lies. Since then, I’ve vowed only to give you truth, however brutal.”
She couldn’t argue that.
For several moments, the only sound was the blood pounding in her ears and the phantom echo of their magic in the stone of the Vault. Sabine tried to pull her hand away, but he didn’t let go. Instead, he stepped closer, so near that the heat of his skin cut through the Vault’s chill.
Azrian’s gaze flicked down to her mouth, then returned to hers. He cupped her jaw, thumb brushing her cheek as though memorizing the slope of her face. He bent, slow and deliberate, until his breath ghosted over her lips.
Then, at the last instant, he twisted away, burying his face in her hair.
Sabine clung to him, the corded muscles of his back firm against her palms, uncertain whether she wanted to pull him closer or push him away until the world stopped spinning.
His heartbeat hammered wildly against her ear, and for the first time, she understood the terror and the power in being utterly wanted .