Chapter 27
The thunderheads rupture well after sunset, rattling the windowpanes and whistling through the cracks in the moulding.
Sheets of rain slice across the dark streets outside.
The guest room is quiet, lit only by a single candle flickering on the dresser.
I lie in bed, back pressed against the pillows, but sleep refuses me.
That girl’s hatred is an image I can’t cast out.
I’ve clenched and relaxed my jaw so much, a cramp now aches in the muscle.
My stomach groans for a dinner skipped, but my appetite fled hours ago.
The hollowed corpse I’ve become dangles over the precipice. One slip and I’ll lose myself to a rage now rising like the tides. The exquisite furniture and down-feathered blankets make a mockery of me. Guilt weighs so heavily on my chest, I can’t bring myself to look about the room.
I shouldn’t be here. Not when there are hundreds of others fighting for scraps.
That girl, the countless refugees just like her, deserve this comfort more than I.
They don’t have blood stained hands like I do.
They haven’t slaughtered and hacked and murdered their way through life as I have.
Yet, I sit here in silken sleep clothes, with clean hair and warm, floral scented skin.
Lock this up, Nova.
Focus on the mission.
The payout.
My usual mantra slips away, though, like a whisper in a crowded room. The air is too thick to breathe, the world too blurred by sobs. Gods, I’m a mess, unraveling at the seams, burning in my own anger. Self-pity such as this is foreign, but the intrusion refuses to release me.
A soft knock quiets the tears.
“Nova?” Jace’s voice is careful, quiet. “Are you up? I know it’s late. Raine held us in council a lot longer than expected today.”
I sit up a little straighter, trying to reinforce my walls.
How can I face him right now? Sob-stained and raw.
A piece of me begs to run to Jace, to fall into his arms and shatter a thousand times over, but I adhere myself to the linens.
Would he think me a coward for retreating when today got too hard?
Or maybe selfish? My breath rises to short shallow bursts.
The bedchamber walls shrink, or expand, I’m not sure which.
Regardless, I’m falling through panic, clenched at every joint.
“We’ll talk in the morning,” I say, the words a mere cough between sobs.
His presences stills behind the door. “Nova, what’s wrong?”
“I’m fine,” I snap.
Gods, clearly I’m a terrible actor, because the door swings open.
Jace stands in the entryway, draped in soaked clothes that mold to his body.
Rain drips from his damp curls, trailing down his jaw, his chest. My stomach knots as his gaze washes over me, turning dire when he catches my salt-stricken cheeks. “What happened?”
“It’s nothing,” I murmur, though my throat burns with tears left unshed. “I’m fine.”
He steps inside, softly clicking the door shut. His midnight scent fills the room, and even in the dim light, I can see the way he studies me, his jaw ticked, and shoulders stiff. A hint of panic dances between the starlit flecks in his eyes, like my anguish is his own.
“Don’t lie to me, starling.” He folds his arms over his chest.
“I don’t need you to stand there and mock me right now, King Ashborne. I’m fine.” I turn my gaze away and force myself to stare at the floorboards.
Every sensation is raw against me—the sheets, my sleepshirt, even my own damned skin. Visions of the past burn through me like wildfire, and I squeeze my eyes shut, battling the next wave of tears now surging behind my eyes.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” he whispers, and my throat closes over the command in his tone—stern, but warm. “Did something happen?”
“Today in the marina, there was a ship of refugees from Smoke.” My voice quivers as I wrap the blanket tighter around myself. “They were slaves, Jace…I…”
Before I can finish, he’s kneeling at my bedside, hand hovering over mine.
“Nova.” Pain flickers through his heavy lashes.
“I can’t…I can’t stop feeling it,” I gasp on the words. “The anger, the guilt. I don’t know how to make it all stop. The memories, the pain, it’s too much. I can’t bear it. I just want it to stop.”
He moves closer, the simple heat of his thumb brushing mine sends a shiver through me I don’t ignore. “I know.”
A shudder escapes me as he brushes a palm against my cheek, swiping away the traitorous tear that’s slipped through my walls. His voice is full and unyielding, like a rock against my angry surf.
“I’m just so fucking angry. So full of this rage I can barely control, and it scares me, because what if it never goes away? What if it’s changed me for the worse?” I choke on the words. Being so vulnerable with him somehow doesn’t feel wrong or humiliating like it should.
His gentle expression is one of patience like he sees through every damned mask I’ve painted. Gone is the smug asshole cracking jokes or slinging calculated retorts, and I don’t know if I should be terrified or comforted.
Jace doesn’t answer, but his eyes don’t falter from mine. My face drains with the realization that I’ve spilled everything to the merciless man seated beside me. He took me prisoner. Threatened to kill me, and yet, the glint in his eye is one all too familiar.
Like calls to like, and I recognize every glint of starlight reflected in his irises. That is incredibly fucking dangerous.
“Fuck, I shouldn’t be telling you this…I’m fine, I promise. I just need a good night’s rest,” I say. Recoiling from his sanctuary is easier now than taking the plunge. I’m treading water, just barely afloat, and I’ll be damned if I fall into him any fucking further than I already have.
Once the room stops spinning and the nausea subsides, I’ll be fine.
Once I can breathe again, I’ll be fine.
Once I forget the scars and my past, I’ll be fine.
Right?
“You don’t have to bear this pain alone, starling. Not tonight,” he whispers.
“I’ve survived this long withstanding it alone.” I break our locked gaze to stare at my hands. They’re shaking beyond control. I clench them.
“But you don’t have to, Nova. Let me be here to lessen the weight.”
I don’t say anything, but when Jace pulls me to his chest, I lean into him further. Then his arms wrap around me, drawing me in closer. “How about a hot bath? You’re freezing.”
“That sounds nice,” I murmur, entirely infected by the warmth his damp skin provides.
He carries me to the washing chamber and sets me on the settee beside the tub.
I force my thoughts quiet by focusing on Jace, like each task is a check on my mental list.
He turns the knob and the faucet flows freely with steaming, clean water. When its full, he finds the lavender oil and lets a few drops fall. The sweet scented haze lingers between us, coating the silence in herbal remedies and unspoken understanding.
Only for a night, I’ll allow myself this comfort—his comfort—solely because by sunrise I need to have collected myself. I can’t be a sobbing mess when I return to Thaye. There’s still too much to learn, too much intel to gather.
For now, though, I’ll break.
I’ll offer myself this reprieve, and by morning I’ll gather the pieces like I always do and lock back in.
“I’ll give you a moment to get in.” Jace disappears back through the door. When I’ve undressed and sunken under the silken water, he returns—a change of clothes and wooden hairbrush in hand. “When was the last time someone’s taken care of you, starling?”
I bite my lip. When was the last time? Before Finnick found me? Before my mother died? Before Smoke’s invasion? Throughout the course of my adult life, no one has ever cared for me. Never once have I allowed someone close enough to even offer. “I…”
“Only with your permission, of course,” he says, seating himself beside the basin.
The lip of the tub is high enough that he’d have to lean over to even glimpse my body submerged under the swirls of bathing oils, but I shift unsteadily realizing I’m entirely nude, entirely exposed before Jace fucking Ashborne.
“It’s been a while,” I say finally.
“Then let me,” he whispers, his eyes softening.
“Okay.”
Jace kneels at the base of the tub and runs his hands through my hair until he finds the clip holding it in place. My breath shallows with each gentle stroke of his fingers, shaking my strands free.
“After the war, I was so angry at my father and his council for their decision to close our borders.” He works the brush through each knot, gently smoothing the locks in place. “I lived with that rage for so long. It ate at me until there was nothing left, if I’m being honest.”
My eyes flutter closed, my attention hanging onto every word. Jace retrieves a glass bottle of hair wash and uncorks it. Its soothing, minty scent wafts around me as he runs his fingers over my scalp, massaging away the tension.
“But it was Isra and Roe who finally pulled me back.” His hands run through my hair, gently coating every strand with soap. “I’m telling you this, starling, because you’re not alone in your rage…your darkness. There are others you can lean on when things get too difficult.”
“I’m not one to rely on others.” I fold my knees into my chest.
Jace looses an amused huff and dips his rinse cup under the surface. Water trickles from my scalp down my spine as he washes my hair clean. My pulse calms with each warm trail of suds and my thoughts quiet enough to find the ground again.
“Lean back,” he commands with one final rinse. “Do you want me to plait it or would you prefer it loose?”
My brow raises. “You know how to plait hair?”
“Yes,” he says, sectioning my strands into thirds.
“My mother taught me when I was a child.” He doesn’t offer anything more than that, but still even the smallest detail of his past feels like one step closer to cracking the hard-coated shell Jace wears around himself.
I tell myself I don’t care to know what lives behind those devastating eyes, but my heart pangs.
Gooseflesh peaks up my arms as he runs his fingers over my scalp. The gentle tugs as he weaves my hair down my spine with expert precision send flutters of calm through my raging mind. The tension in my neck, my shoulders, even my jaw release and I melt into the tub, entirely exhausted.
“Jace?” I ask, tipping my chin toward him.
“Yes?” He secures my hair and dries his hands in a cotton cloth.
Candlelight flickers around us, draping his features in amber hues.
He looks so normal in this light. Not the King of Shadow, or a rider bonded to the continent’s most lethal of dragons.
Leaning over his stool, one hand draped lazily at the tub’s edge, he’s simply a man.
“Thank you,” I say, and wholeheartedly mean it.
“It is my honor, starling,” he replies. “I’ll give you some privacy to get dressed.”
When the tub has drained and I’ve wrapped myself in a robe, exhaustion unleashes its fury.
My muscles ache with the release of angry tension and my pulse tires until it’s sluggish and begging for rest. I can’t pretend the darkness won’t come clawing again tomorrow, nor will that little voice slinging vicious thoughts stay away, but for now there’s silence.
And that’s enough.
Jace returns with a knock on the bathing chamber door.
He’s changed into his own sleeping clothes, the tie of his cotton shirt hanging loosely down his chest. His hair, now dry, clings to his brow in waves of midnight.
There’s a quiet restlessness shaded under his eyes I hadn’t noticed before.
Maybe Raine’s council meeting went poorly or maybe he, too, harbors his own demons but seeing him like this, so casually intimate, does something to me I shouldn’t acknowledge.
“Get some rest. We’ll talk more in the morning if you’d like,” he says, bracing a hand on the doorframe.
A piece of me begs to tell him to stay, to tuck us both under the plush covers and drift off to sleep in his arms, but I don’t. He’s seen me laid bare and raw, tear stained and sobbing. That’s more than I want to allow.
“Goodnight,” I reply.
His shoulders stiffen for less than a breath. Satisfaction nips at me, all too loud, all too eager. It’s disappointment glittering in his gaze.
He wants to stay, just as much as I want him to.
Without another word, Jace turns on his heels and disappears through the bedchamber door.