I nod—the only reply I can manage with the tingling heat spreading through me—and I slowly turn to face him.
A mistake.
The dizzying questions that have been threatening my balance go up in smoke, leaving me with only a singular, dangerous query.
What happens if I lean toward him now?
We’re alone up here. Sesca is nowhere in sight. The guards that often station themselves along this rooftop are nowhere to be seen. The servants who dealt with the chains have moved on from down below. Clouds are shifting over the moon, blocking its light, and the darkness seems to wrap around us like a shared cloak, pulling us together until there is no space left between us—only tense silence and a smoldering, dangerous heat.
“I’ve wanted to kiss you all night,” he murmurs, a ragged,barely-there restraint to the words, and a dark desire in his gaze that tells me he doesn’t want to stop at just a kiss.
My hand reaches for his face before I can stop it, knuckles grazing the strong line of his jaw, mind wondering what it would be like to trace every angle of him this way. My breathing turns shallow at the thought. I lower my hand to his chest. He places his own over top of it, holding it to his fiercely beating heart.
“There’s no one around here that we need to trick,” I point out in a whisper.
“I know.”
“So who are we trying to fool?”
His forehead leans into mine. He cups my face, his thumb tracing my lower lip with careful, considerate precision, like he’s trying to decide what part he wants to taste first. “Ourselves, maybe.”
I exhale a bitter little laugh.
He’s nearly fooled me, at least.
Again.
I take a step back. His hand holds on to mine as I go, and I can’t bring myself to pull it free. I just shake my head and say, “This is a bad idea.”
His grip tightens for a moment before he seems to realize what he’s doing. “Yes. It is.”
He releases me.
I wander away from him, hugging myself and searching the skies for Sesca. I don’t see her. I don’t feel any trace of the warmth she was lending me earlier, and though I try not to let it, the dread finds its way in. It’s a well-worn path at this point, after all, as often as I’ve let the fear of loss and abandonment flow through me.
“What if she doesn’t come back?” I whisper, more to myself than Reave.
“She’s bonded to you,” he says, stepping closer. “She’ll come back.”
I don’t answer, keeping my gaze on the sky.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” he asks.
“I swear she can read my mind at times, and she…” Wrapping my arms more tightly around myself, I move to a portion of the roof that hangs out farther than the rest, with an intricate railing and occasional notched grooves likely meant for resting weapons upon—one of the vantage points the guards are often stationed in.
Reave follows, watching me expectantly.
“She knows me,” I finally manage to say. “Maybe better than anyone, at this point, and so maybe…maybe she’s seen something about me that’s going to make her keep flying as far away as she can possibly get.”
He gives me a bemused look. “What are you talking about?”
I loose a shuddering breath. This…thisis one of the chains I’ve yet to break—this secret that I’ve kept buried so deeply inside of me for so long that it feels like I couldn’t possibly dig it up and release it.
Then I picture Sesca’s body shooting upwards toward the moon, and I wonder what it would be like to drop the weight of my own chains, to fly so effortlessly, so freely.
I decide to try.
Bracing my hands against the railing, I say, “I think I resisted my bond with her when I first arrived here because I didn’t want to be…known. It terrifies me, letting anyone or anything in like that. Part of the reason I was so committed to my role as an Ashwalker was because it gave me anexcuse to not get close to people. You can’t, when you’re in that line of work. It’s too dangerous. People don’t expect you to open up to them about the things you’ve done, and so nobody knew the real me. And I liked it that way—the way it was respect for my profession, not fear, that kept others at a distance. Briar is the only one I’m truly close with, and there are things that even she doesn’t know. Things that would likely scare her away if I told them to her.”
