“You don’t have to go. You don’t have to follow me,” she said, even though the idea of leaving him broke something in her. He’d sworn himself to her, taken the Desert Oath, but she could release him from it. Ravence had failed him, and she owed him his freedom. Hedeservedhis freedom.
But Yassen stepped closer.
“I go where you go,” he whispered.
He drew her into his arms, and she pressed her face into his neck, breathing in his smell of ash and fresh mountain air. Felt the thrum of his heart beneath her cheek. They held each other for a long time, drinking in each other’s warmth. And somewhere in that black ether of anguish, Elena felt a sliver of solace. Of all people, he understood her grief. How could she ever let him go?
When they parted, Yassen stepped back.
“Shall we—” he began.
She stood on her toes and kissed him.
His lips were warm, sweet. He tasted of spice and honey, of the desert and the mountain. He tasted of home.
“I see you,” she whispered and met his eyes.
At this, he smiled. It was small, but genuine, kind, and it made her bloom to think that she could make him smile. That this smile, the one he gave her now, was hers and hers alone.
He touched his forehead against hers. Sunlight spilled onto them, and Yassen cupped their hands as if to catch the light and keep it between them.
“And I see you,” he whispered.
She gently took the sunlight in her hand and cupped his face. With his eyes still on hers, Yassen kissed her wrist.
“I see you,” he said.
Kissed the inside of her arm. “I see you.”
Down her elbow, up her shoulder, until she felt his breath brush her neck and his hot lips against her collarbone. “I see you.”
He drew her to the bed, and she gasped, digging her fingers in his hair as he moved down her chest, her breasts, rolling up her shirt as he kissed the soft skin of her stomach. Up he traveled again until it was he who pressed sunlight to her face, his lips a breath away from hers.
“And I give myself, utterly and completely, to you,” he said.
He kissed her, a kiss that seemed to send an electric shock through her body as he slowly peeled off their clothes, bit the insides of her thighs.
“Yassen,” she moaned, breathless. He drew her into his lap, and she locked her legs around him, running her hands across his shoulders, down the arm she had tended. When she moved her hips against his, he shuddered into her neck.
“Fuck, Elena,” he groaned.
Elena bucked, flipping them so he was on his back and she was straddling him. Yassen looked up, surprised. A slow grin spread on his face as she traced the wide span of his chest, the ridges of his stomach. She rocked her hips against his, and Yassen moaned. That sound itself threatened to undo her as Elena drove him into the bed, moving faster, deeper, their breaths hitching together, his hands clasping her waist, hers tangling in his hair. And when she gasped, verging on the brink, he held her closer. Kissed her scars as she touched his. Whispered sweet love into her ears as she trembled in his arms.
He took it—all the broken parts of her—and she forgot, for once, her burden, as if nothing in the world mattered, not Ravence or Jantar, but her, but them.
Elena curled into Yassen, her arm draped across his chest. She could feel his breath dance against her hair. His chest rose and fell in slow, steady beats, and she heard the song of his heart in her ear. She could just stay, wrapped in this bliss.
But as she saw the light gradually seep out of the room, Elena knew that was an impossible dream. People like her did not deserve bliss like this.
She tried to disentangle herself without waking Yassen, but he stirred against her.
“What are you doing?” he murmured sleepily.
“I have to go,” she whispered.
“Why?”
She touched his cheek, tracing the arch of his eyebrows. He smelled of sandstone and musk.
