I'm close, I'mso close?—
He grabs my outstretched hand and shoves it toward the ground, trying to break my focus.
I grit my teeth. “Wait, I can do this, I swear I —”
“NO!”
His hands grab my face so roughly—and his tone is so sharp, so furious—that I think it shocks us both.
I stop.
We stare at each other, both heaving for breath.
He takes a step back before speaking again, in a quieter but still seething tone. “We're done with this, Arowyn.”
I can't find my voice, so I simply stand there in silence, my body still trembling from the weight of his curse as he turns and walks away.
Chapter Forty
Reave doesn’t go far—just to the other side of the roof—but the space between us feels as vast as the sky above.
My body is still trembling, my weight odd and unbalanced by whatever it absorbed from his. I stumble over and settle down in the sitting area I created in the shadows of the roof, tucking my head toward my chest and closing my eyes.
I feel like I’m drifting through a nightmare for several minutes. The curse curls through my blood like a living thing with claws that flex and dig, trying to make a deeper home for itself. When it finally settles enough that I can regain some semblance of balance, I’m stillhauntinglyaware of it; it feels like a second heartbeat, slower and colder underneath my own.
With sinking clarity, I realize Reave was right: Transferring the curse into me isn’t going to solve anything unless I can figure out how to control and destroy it after taking it in. Given enough time, and with Sesca’s help, maybe I could…
But what timedo we have?
When I look up again, I’m relieved to see Reave is at least still here, his head bowed and hands braced against the railing.
As I stare at him, I realize he’s standing in the same place he was when we first visited this rooftop together. I’ve relived that moment a hundred times in my head, down to the last detail. The cool night air, the rush of dragon wings, the almost-kiss we shared…
And it happens tonight just as it did back then: an urge to follow him, to meet him under the stars and tell him more than I’ve ever told anybody about even the deepest, darkest parts of my heart.
I still want to know you, he’d said.
No matter my mistakes or failures or secrets.
He didn't run from me that night, and he doesn't run when I come to stand beside him now. When I put my hand on the railing beside his, his hand slides over top of it and simply rests there, some of the tension easing from his shoulders as though a part of him has been realigned by the mere presence of me.
“I’m sorry,” I say, barely above a whisper. “I keep trying to find a way to fix all of these things that are so much bigger than I expected them to be, and I keep coming up short.”
He shakes his head, but I can’t stop talking now that I’ve started.
“I knew it was risky. I couldn’t help myself, though. I had to begin, to do something,anythingthat felt like progress. I really didn’t mean to?—”
“Quit apologizing. Please.”
I open my mouth only to close it again as he cuts me a sideways glance.
We fall silent for several minutes, both of us lookingtoward the sky. I wonder about the constellations he knows, the stories his kingdom tells about them. If any of them are the same as the ones I grew up with. If we could ever really find common ground beneath them, or if we’re still just trying to fool ourselves. The questions keep coming, and suddenly my heart is racing and I can’t make it stop, just like I can’t stopanyof the frightening, uncertain things that are circling closer and closer to us.
“This is the spot where it happened,” he says suddenly.
“Where what happened?”
A pause, and then: “Where I realized there was no going back. That I was drowning in you, and I no longer cared about finding my way back to the surface.”
