I reach into the pillowcase and pull out the sleep elixir just as all hell breaks loose.
Chapter Fourteen
Igrab the sleep elixir with my shadows, throwing it into Seth’s mouth as he opens it to say, “What the—”
Larus shatters my shackles and then Taran’s as Ronan rushes over to me, taking me in his arms.
“Sylvie,” he sighs as he pulls me to his chest, his arms wrapping around my back in a tight embrace.
Oh, gods, therelief. The relief isunbelievable.
My entire body relaxes instantaneously. He’s here. He’s actually here, alive and well and holding me again.
Being in Ronan’s arms again feels unreal after everything I’ve been through since I was taken from him. All of the panic and doubt and fear melts away in his embrace. He strokes my back gently, kissing the top of my head. “I’m here,” he whispers.
Ronan runs his hands over the spots where the nightgown exposes my skin, finding my injuries and healing them. The touch of his light on my body is so perfectly warm and soothing, like waking up with the sun filtering through a window on a cold day.
Then he lowers himself to the floor to heal the spots on my ankles where the shackles rubbed against my skin, and his handslinger there on my legs, rubbing soft circles on my calves and then running up my thighs as he looks into my eyes, dropping his disguise to let me see him.
The sight of him down there on his knees.
My gods.
It sends a flood of warmth and desire through my body as I look at his perfect, beautiful face. But my need for him goes far beyond physical desire. “I couldn’t feel you,” I say, reaching down to trace the line of his strong jaw, to feel the scratch of stubble on his cheeks. And then to hold on to his face to remind myself that he’s real, and he’s here.
He closes his eyes and presses his lips to my palm. “I know. I’m sorry. I knew if you felt me, you’d try to escape, and I didn’t want it to affect our plan. I had to close myself off to you. It was so painful, lying to myself like that.”
His warm brown eyes are haunted. What had he endured to find me? “I tried to tell you not to come. I tried to beg you with my feelings. Ronan, if they find you, they’ll kill you. They’ll kill us all.”
“Sylvie.” He sighs, standing and pulling me back into his arms. Then he breaks the dam he’s kept on his own feelings, letting the entire flood of them free until I’m drowning in him. His love for me, his anguish at not being able to protect me. His guilt that loving him has put me in danger. His primal, undeniable need for me, to be with me, to be in me. It hits me so strongly and so suddenly I can barely breathe. “Gods. You must know I’ll always come for you. There is nowhere you can go where I won’t find you. I felt you all the way in the palace. Vahlo himself couldn’t keep me away.”
“You felt me in the palace? How is that—”
“There’s no time,” hisses Larus. “We have to go. Now.”
Ronan kisses me quickly on the lips, lingering there for a brief moment that’s just long enough to send my heart racing beforetaking my hand. “Come on,” he says. “It’s time to move the prisoners. Hold your hands together like they’re bound. Taran, you too.”
He claps Taran on the shoulder and then pulls him into a brief hug, healing his wounds the rest of the way. “Thank you for keeping her safe for me.”
“If anything, she kept me safe.”
Ronan grins. “I should have known.”
Larus is waiting for us at the tent flap, but I stop at Seth’s desk.
I look at Seth there slumped over on his papers. He’ll be furious once he realizes he drooled on them, maybe even more furious than he’ll be that we escaped.
But there’s something soft about him in his unconsciousness. Something about him that I’ve seen in my time with him that isn’t warm or kind, per se, not in the way that someone like Ronan is. But when Adria said he has an affection for me like Larus does, I think she may have had a point. “Wait.”
“Something wrong, my love?” asks Ronan, coming quickly to my side.
This is probably a monumentally stupid decision, but I know what I have to do. I can’t leave him here. “We have to take him too.”
“What?” says Larus. “Sylvie, let’s go. We don’t have long until the guard change.”
“Ronan,” I say, sharing with him my feelings about Seth. “He could be useful.”
Ronan sighs. He’s not fond of my brother, but he can see his value as a prisoner.
