“It’s not comparable, Kai. You wouldn’t watch me marry someone else. You wouldn’t.”
Kai didn’t answer for a long moment, but the weight of his eyes grew with every passing second until she felt, not for the first time, that he was peering right through her skin. Poring over her inner workings, like a single glance could bring him the perfect combination of words to diffuse the tension winding through her airways, smothering her heartbeat. It made her feel seen—it made her feelhandled,too. Her fingers curled, nails biting into her skin.
“I wouldn’twantto,” Kai said carefully.
By the way he strained thewant, she knew he meant for her to infer that he’d let it happen. That he’d be reasonable, if he had to. If it came to that. Itwouldn’t,though, not for him. He would never have to watch her walk down the aisle and take another man’s ring because it would simply never happen.
And if it did, she wouldn’t entertain the idea for a single second.
The fact that hecouldmade her entire ribcage feel like one giant bruise, the looming thumb of tomorrow’s nuptials pressing down on the pain.
“But?” she prompted.
Nothing.
“No, go on, Kai,” she managed to grit out, gesturing broadly. “Tell me you would let me marry someone else.”
He wouldn’t look at her, though he flinched at the slight crack in her breath.
“Tell me youwantto go through with this.”
She knew, in the split second before Kai reacted, that it was a step too far, too close to a cruelty. His gaze was on fire when it snapped to hers, the air between them heating despite the clinging frost all around them. His step toward her was thunderous, but his grasp on her arm was gentle as ever. The contradictions rippled through him; knotted brow, fingers soft on her jaw, eyes searing, voice low.
“I don’t want to marry anyone who isn’tyou, and you know it.”
Her breath disintegrated in one forceful gust.
Anyone who isn’t you.
She stared up at him, tongue numb and useless in her mouth, waiting for the moment he would blink and realise what he’d said. Waiting for him to explain it away or qualify it somehow. He didn’t. He only stared at her in that way of his, a devoutee looking his one and only belief in the face, equal parts awed and defiant.
The silence took on an unearthly quality, thick and shimmering on the air. Emotion shivered physically through her until her eyes stung and her blood beat furiously at her pulse points. She let Kai pull her closer, let him bow his head to hers; she wasn’t sure she could have stopped him if she’d tried.
“A future with you,” he said, his breath a whisper on her lips. “Adeline, that isallI want. It’s all I’ve wanted for some time now. But that future doesn’t exist unless I do this.”
When she didn’t answer, he pulled back to peer at her, but Adeline couldn’t find her own thoughts, much less her words.She could only stare back at him, a riot of pure feeling thundering through her every pore and paralysing her entirely.
Kai’s brows sloped gently together.
“You knew that,” he reminded her.
And she did.
Kai had never been afraid of putting words to his feelings. He was never the one dragging obstacles into their path; it had been her. Always her, reared on disdain and scared to feelanythingtoo deeply, to love anyone too much lest her love be shrugged off or altogether ignored. How could she expect any different, when the one person who was supposed to love her beyond reason had never seemed to care? She’d had to protect herself, had to make it so her battered heart could continue to beat unbruised.
But Selmahadcared, in her way—and she was not the same lonely child she’d once been. She never would be again.
Adeline gave a wordless nod and turned her head to kiss Kai’s palm. Then whispered into it, small, muffled, uncertain.
“Then don’t marry her.”
“Adeline.” The weight of that sigh drew the light from his face, his expression shuttering, voice falling flat. “Give me a solution, then.”
She didn’t have one, and when he tilted her face toward him once more, she knew he saw it. She rushed to speak anyway.
“You’ve made every sacrifice imaginable, Kai. It’s not fair.”
“And you think I’m being noble? I’ve told you time and time again what a selfish man I truly am. I want you more than Idon’twant this. I want your happiness more than anything I’ve ever wanted in more than six hundred years. More than my freedom.More than my own damned kingdom. If this is the path to a world where you’re happy, Adeline, where you’resafe, where you have what you’ve come all this way for, then I will be selfish one more time. I’ll let her claim me for a moment, if it means I get to claim you from there on out.”
