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“You said it was you.”
He fiddles with his rings. “Felt like me.”
I realize now what I’m doing. I’m poking and searching, trying to get him to say he cares about me, hoping he’ll open up and we’ll no longer have to live two different lives when awake and asleep. I want to hold him like I do in my dreams.
I need to tell him, tell him everything. Tell him he’s my kindred soul, tell him how much these dreams meant to me, before I met him. And yet the idea feels like jumping from a height when I don’t know how far I am from the ground. To open myself like that… There’s a chill all over my body, but there’s also a fire burning deep down, yearning to come out. The truth. If I can make it brave my constricted throat, if I can trust that I won’t be hurt, it will come out.
Trust the truth. Perhaps I should tell him part of it. I inhale, hoping there’s courage in the air reaching my lungs. “The dreams, they had been going on since before I met you.”
He pauses. “For me too, but you were… different. They started a year before.”
“Then how come you thought I was manipulating you?”
“I thought you were transforming something in my own mind, or changing something that already existed. I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t see you clearly before, then I met you, and boom, it was you, had always been you. Apologies, but it felt… suspicious.”
“I…” I want to tell him everything, but I’m afraid of what he’ll think. Maybe I should say it. “I was sad, but then I learned this trick of faith to see my kindred soul, and burned a strand of hair on a candle, thinking about the strands connecting souls. Then the dreams started. All I saw was the star on your chest. Until I met you.”
His breath hitches and his lips part. His eyes bare no accusation, no playfulness, just surprise.
I’d better say the whole truth while I’m at it. “It was you I kissed,” I blurt. His eyes look even darker in the dim glow of his lightstone, and make my heart beat faster. “You,” I continue, even though my throat is about to close. “The man who gave me my sword, who cared enough for me to make sure I was well clothed and fed. I mean…”
I swallow. Giving me a gift and clothing me isn’t why I kissed him, and doesn’t sound the least romantic.
“I kissed the man who worried about me, worried about my heart being broken—despite invading my thoughts.” This is also terrible. He’s staring at me wide-eyed, perhaps thinking I’m a lunatic. I need to fix it. “The man who tried to encourage me to find my strength. The man who showed me his humanity and let me reach out to him in his most vulnerable moment.” Maybe I need to simplify it. “I kissed you. Do I need a reason?”
He’s just staring at me in silence. I fear he’ll brush me off or tell me I’m pathetic. Maybe he’ll burst out laughing.
Finally, he takes my hand, then strokes my palm in a circular motion. Perhaps he’ll tell me nicely that my feelings are appreciated, but not returned.
He says, “I don’t know if a reason is needed, but you do excel in asking for mine, wife.” He chuckles. “You keep asking me why I married you, why I traded the Shadow Ring for you. Oh, the Shadow Ring, why?”
I pull my hand. “Great. Mock me.”
“I’m not mocking.” He takes my hand again, brings it to his lips, and kisses it. “Fine, maybe I was.” He pinches my nose, then whispers in my ear, “You’re my wife, Astra. You don’t need any reason to kiss me. All you need is to tell me that this is what you really want.”
The low rumble of his voice brings shivers all over my body, and yet my mind doesn’t love his words. “You still think I’m trying to manipulate you?”
“No. Just that you might still be confused, afraid, uncertain...” He looks up and down my face slowly. “I wish everything was different, wish we had all the time in the world. I would have courted you—if I could. I agree you were snatched from your castle. While I can tell myself it was justified, it doesn’t wipe away the fear you must have felt. I’m… not sorry. I can’t say that. I’ll never say that. But I want you to be comfortable, happy.” He closes his eyes and inhales, then looks at me again. “Despite all the danger following me. The danger that will follow you too.”
I touch his soft, wonderful hair, bury my fingers in his lovely curls. “Danger is a paltry price, Marlak. And if I’m in danger already, what difference does it make if we—” I swallow. Kiss? Make love? Become a real couple? Why do I still struggle with words?
His face is so close, his lips just a breath away, as if inviting me. Perhaps words just complicate everything.
I reach out and kiss his lips, and then he’s holding my face with his hands and kissing me deeper, his soft lips pressing into mine. It’s a freeing kiss, tearing down the dam that kept my feelings restrained for so long. Too long.
26
Icaress his hair with one hand, his chest with the other, that lovely chest where I rested my head so often.
He breaks the kiss, still holding my face, so much care and love in his stare.
“Be my wife, Astra. Be my wife in earnest.”
A happy laughter escapes me. “Make me. Make me your wife.”
He chuckles and kisses my temple. “I have to redeem myself. The worst part of these visions and dreams is that you must be thinking I’m some kind of deranged animal who doesn’t know how to make love.”
I laugh again. “That’s not true, and you know it. And I don’t mind…” I swallow. “… the deranged animal.”
