“She’s scared of me,” I murmur.
River looks up. “You unsettle people. It’s what you do.”
“Do I unsettle you?”
She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t need to.
River turns to me fully now. Arms crossed. Eyes narrowed.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Do we trust her?”
That word.Trust.It hangs in the air like a blade no one wants to claim.
I shift my weight, crack the stiffness out of my neck. “Trust is for poets and fools,” I say. “But ambition? That we can predict.”
River snorts. “You’re such a romantic.”
“I am. Just not the pretty kind.”
She doesn’t laugh, but her mouth quirks at the corner, and gods help me, I want to kiss that smirk off her face again. I want to pull her close in this forgotten garden, press her into the ivy, and devour every breath she hasn’t dared take around me.
But I don’t.
I just look at her.
She meets my gaze for a second too long, then turns away, pretending to study a vine-choked statue like it’s suddenly interesting.
“We should get back before the streets wake up,” she mutters.
I grunt in agreement, and we slip back into the winding bones of the city, silent as thieves.
The inn stinks of mildew and old soup. The floorboards wheeze with every step. I can hear a couple fighting upstairs—something about a missing ring and a broken promise. Down the hall, someone’s sobbing through the walls. The city never sleeps. It just suffers quieter after midnight.
River shrugs out of her coat and tosses it on the chair. She’s all angles and shadow in the low lantern light. Her back to me, her shoulders tight again. I can almost hear the gears grinding in her head.
She doesn’t speak. Just moves to the bed, sits on the edge, starts pulling off her boots.
I stay by the door a moment longer than necessary. Watching her. Wanting her. Afraid of what happens if I act on it.
Because she doesn’t flinch when I look at her like this. Doesn’t pretend she doesn’t notice. She lets me see. And that’s the worst part.
She gets under my skin without even trying.
I finally kick off my own boots and move to the other side of the bed. We lie like strangers with shared secrets—backs turned, breaths uneven, skin prickling with awareness.
I listen to her breathing slow. Not sleep yet, but close.
The room is dark, save for the sliver of lantern glow leaking under the door. I smell dust and oil and the faintest trace of her on the sheets—salt, steel, lilac.
And something warmer. Something I shouldn’t be able to name.
I don’t touch her. Not even an inch. But gods, I want to.
My fingers itch for her. My body remembers every stolen moment, every look that lasted too long. The taste of her mouth still clings to mine like sin.
