Andwait.
My stomach rumbles, the storm lashing against the walls so hard my imagination paints all sorts of monsters right outside the door. On the other side of the window, looking in.
What ifhe’sjust a figment of my imagination, and I’m sitting here waiting to have dinner with a ghost that’s not coming back?
My chest tightens, gaze spearing to the note on the bedside barrel, sipping his beautifully scrawled words like I used to sip my caspun.
Are you?
Am I going crazy?
I squeeze my eyes shut, pop them open.
Do it again.
Again.
I don’t wake in a gold-brushed room swathed in white sheets, shackled in a cupla with unfulfilled promises lodged in my chest like splinters. I’m still here—still breathinghisscent.
Still convinced this is too good to be true.
The door shoves open, and my breath hitches as Rhordyn pours into the room like a storm cloud, stuffing into the too-small space, dwarfing everything, snatching all the air and holding it hostage.
But I don’t need it. Not now.
I’d choose the vision of him—here and alive—over the breath in my lungs from now until the end of time.
The tightness eases from my chest, drawing my attention to a crack in my untended relief dome. To a single vine curling up in waving twists, stretching toward my heart like it’s reaching for the sun.
I stuff it back down the hole and bog up the gap.
Rhordyn kicks the door shut, his arms laden with a pile of what I suppose is wood wrapped in the wet cloak like a big, knobbly parcel. Water dripping from his hair, clothes sodden, he shakes off his boots and makes his way into the room.
He looks at me, expression unreadable as his eyes dip, then lift again before drifting to the dinner table, his gaze scouring the settings. My heart beats me up from the inside as the entire world seems to still.
Even the storm seems to pause.
Slowly, he makes his way across the room, and there’s something in the way he moves that I can’t quite put my finger on, not as smooth and graceful as he usually is—like each step is a battle won. Stealing another glimpse at me, he settles the wood on the ground beside the stove.
Nausea riles through me, threatening to stem my appetite entirely.
He hates it.
He’s thinking of a way to let me down gently—like telling me he actually hates stew. That he only made so much because I looked really hungry.
Seems like a Rhordyn thing to do.
Maybe he’s a ghost, and he can’t even eat …
Maybe I’m all alone in this room.
He crouches before the stove, opens the hatch, and feeds the flames with several pieces of wood, the firelight caressing his beautifully sculpted face. Leaving the stove’s hatch open, he stands, looking down on me.
My heart stills at the sight—his towering body framed by the roaring fire at his back.
I want nothing more than to sit with him. To enjoy the warmth and the sound of rain on the roof and the carefully prepared stew.
But what if he says no?
