“Stop,” I hissed, furious when I realized what he was about to say. He raised his head to glare in frustration.
“Orion—”
“I’d rather let him burn the whole fucking kingdom to the ground than give you up!” I shouted and shoved away from the wall to advance on Riordan angrily.
“I cannot allow you to do that,” he insisted softly.
“Why the fuck not? Would you give me or Amira up if the situation were reversed—”
“Of course not!” he snarled as if offended.
“Thenwhywould you expect us to? Do you really not know that I would spill the last drop of my blood and give up the final breath in my lungs for you? Do you truly not know how much I—”
I bit off the confession on a harsh inhale as emotion threatened to overwhelm me. I tried to avert my eyes as he rose from his seat, but his hand seized my hair at the back of my head to bring our foreheads together.
“Of course, I know that. But it is not either of your lives that will pacify the Wild Hunt, so I am the only one who can makethis sacrifice to protect the both—”
“This is not a sacrifice I want, Riordan!Fightfor us! Fight for our future, even if it is fleeting, because there is no world in which I could exist without you,” I pleaded.
Riordan stilled, but after a moment, his thumb began to trace slow soothing circles on the back of my head in a way that made me want to melt into him even more.
“I know that you did not mean for me to catch the drift of your thoughts from earlier. But I did,” he whispered.
I froze, my fear replaced so quickly with a painfully familiar ache for him that it made my head spin. My heart throbbed with hopeful yearning as I dared to wonder what he wanted to hear from me.
But then, just as they always did, the ugly doubts and self-loathing began creeping in like weeds to strangle me. Because no matter how far removed I had become from my vile past, it would forever live in the deepest parts of my soul. My heart had been irrevocably fractured and my body was branded and scarred from it, but it was my mind that had borne the worst of the disfigurements. It was my thoughts and memories that were forged into the monster from which I could never escape.
I was about to pull away from Riordan when another memory broke through the rising tide of self-loathing and shame. A memory of the gentle sensation of Amira’s soft lips on my scarred flesh. How she had kissed the brands on both of my forearms to prove that she did not find them reprehensible. She did not findmereprehensible.
It took every ounce of determination I could drag from the depths of my heart to turn back the tide of self-doubt, but I forced it down.
“What would you like me to say? You chose well—”
“I want to hear about this future you want me to fight for so badly. What does it look like to you?” he asked.
I opened my mouth to respond impulsively but stopped without knowing what to say, my heart pounding so hard it hurtmy chest.
“You have to know… how I always felt,” I breathed, hardly able to believe I had uttered the confession aloud that had been weighing on my heart.
“Say it,” he commanded, making me shiver from the demand in his voice. He only waited several heartbeats before he became impatient with me, and then his hand slid to the back of my neck to clench me commandingly. “You willsayit,” he insisted, still soft but firm.
I sucked in a breath and held it, trying to regain control of my erratic heart so my voice did not tremble.
“I love you. I have always loved you,” I whispered.
Riordan released a breath of what sounded like relief, and his thumb traced another gentle pattern on the side of my neck. He still held me as if he was afraid I might flee from him if he let me go.
“Not always,” he recalled in amusement that made me jerk my head back to stare at him in astonishment that he did not seem surprised by my admission.
“Always. Certainly not as deeply as I do now, but I was yours the moment you looked at me,” I reassured him.
Riordan blinked, his amusement faltering in lieu of his surprise at this new confession. But then he tilted his head playfully again as his eyes lowered to my mouth.
“Then why do I recall you punching me in the face the first time I looked at you?”
“That was not the first time,” I pointed out, and his brows rose at me.
“You will forgive the oversight since you did tell me never to bring that up when you punched me. But I need to know, so I will risk your ire now,” he declared with a playful seriousness. “How did I make you mine?”
