Even so, the pull to follow him is fierce. If I were to tuck into a ball, I’m certain gravity would roll me toward a swift end. Like I’m tethered to him, my soul seeking his.
I slam the lid on that thorny thought and drag my eyes open, squinting through the drizzles of water.
Frowning, Zali studies me, her hair a curtain around her face, lips a thin line, as if she’s biting down on words threatening to spew forth. Like another slap to the face, it occurs to me that I’m stripped bare—all my weaknesses on display for this woman who is so put together. So poised, perfect, strong.
I’ve never felt so raw. So vulnerable.
So fucking lost.
“I just wanted to sleep,” I croak, and her palm collides with my face again. My head tosses sideways, cheek blooming with a slap of pain.
“Stop that,” I slur, upper lip threatening to peel back.
She grabs my chin and jerks my face to the side, forcing me to look at her. “Don’t make it so easy for them,” she hisses, waving the half-chomped lump of caspun in my face.
“You don’t make any sense,” I groan, closing my eyes against the water’s relentless spray. Against the swirl of wrath, disappointment, and concern staining her eyes.
She cares. For me.
I don’t know what to do with that. How to handle it. It’s easier to … not. Because I hurt people who care.
Every. Single. Time.
“I make perfect sense,” she grits out, and I’m lugged into a sitting position, swaying like a bloom in the breeze. Water batters my back and seeps through my heavy length of hair, my shoulders bowed forward, blinks slow and deep as I take in our surroundings.
We’re in Rhordyn’s washroom, amidst a sea of smoggy steam heavy with the leathery, frosty scent ofhim.Ofuscrushed together. Crammed into each other’s atmospheres. Before my damage devoured him.
Before I killed the man I love.
Zali’s sodden, bright-red cape drags along the floor like a trail of blood as she walks to the corner of the room, drops the bitten stump of caspun into the latrine, and pulls the chain.
My heart plummets so fast I almost rock forward and face-plant the stone. “What are youdoing?”
“Welcome to your reckoning,” she bites out.
“Ineededthat!”
She glares at me so hard I’m forced to drop my gaze. Probably not the right choice of words considering the state she just found me in.
She strides toward me and kneels, and I look up in time to see her hand crank back. I snatch her wrist a second before her palm can collide with my cheek again.
Her eyes widen, darken, like pots of honey flamed over a bed of hot coals as I use my grip to pull her so close her breath is blasting me—the water streaming over her head, her hair the deep, dusky shade of red wine now that it’s plastered to her cheeks.
“Don’t.”
Her lips slash into a wicked smile. “There she is.”
I snarl.
She stands, scrubbing her face with her hands. “Did you tell anyone else?”
“No …”
“That’s something,” she murmurs, then sits on her heels and stares down all my broken bits like she’s not afraid to cut herself on them. Her gaze lands on my eyes, and the divot between her brows deepens. “You need sunshine.”
A thousand other versions of the same proclamation pick at me from the past. Mersi, Baze, and eventually,him …
I frown, still swaying with a tide of my own. “You don’t know what I need.”
