I can’t read her expression. Confusion maybe?“Gharmaerif!”she yells, and red brightens the entire room.
I reach out and stop her arm before she bathes my room in water. “Adraa, stop. You need to break the ice with white magic. You can’t just heat it up. Or, well, I guess you can. But it’s going to take you all day.”
She tugs her arm away and bangs on the wall once more before turning back to me.
“I…I can’t do it.”
She can’t do what? Stand the thought of marrying me?
“Am I really that horrible?” I whisper.
She gestures to the door. “I mean I can’t break it.”
“Oh.”
Carefully, I step closer. When she doesn’t protest, I take another step. I place one hand on the sheet of ice. “I’m sorry,” Isay.
“Hima Diavadloc,”I cast. The ice cracks slowly around my fingers and then splinters outward. Ice rains on the floor, splintering and cracking like a small replica of the ice door downstairs. I don’t look at it, though, because Adraa is staring at me, and I at her. She’s especially beautiful right now: face flushed, strands of hair falling out of her braid, strength and stubbornness radiating off her as she takes in heavy breaths.
“If you want to leave, you can,” I say.
She doesn’t move. “You aren’t horrible.”
“But are you…?” I can’t even say it. “Would you consider Moolek’s offer?”
“No.”
“So you would never—”
“Of course I wouldn’t. Gods, Jatin, I likeyou!”
The world pauses, the entire bloody world. Adraa looks down at her hands, rubbing them together. “I realize you don’t feel the same way. But somewhere in all this, even amid all our lies, I fell in love with you.”
Everything lifts, spins, whirls. My heart beats so loudly it pounds in my ears. She loves me? “What do you mean I don’t feel the same way? Adraa—”
“Kalyan told me you lied to stop our arguing and competitiveness so that we could become friends.”
For blood’s sake. Kalyan is a dead man. I will never let him live this down. Only friends? “Adraa, I’ve loved you since—Ican’t even pinpoint it, maybe since I met you.”
“What?”
“I love you.”
I don’t know how long we stare at each other in silence. One moment our eyes are locked, and the next it’s our lips. I can’t even tell who moved first, but as soon as I start kissing her, I never want to stop. I push her against the door, one hand reaching into her hair, the other at her waist, pulling her closer to me. Gods, how I’ve waited for this, to feel her pressed against me. And blood, the way she feels. Her arms wind around my waist and her hands tug at my kurta. I groan. Adraa moans softly back. It’s the most attractive sound I’ve ever heard. To think she is as undone as I am.
She smells like mountain air. Like each and every letter I raced to open. Her skin is soft, her hair is thick, and I get to kissher.
“This is how we should finish every argument we have from now on,” I whisper, catching my breath.
She arches an eyebrow. “We better not have another argument like this one.”
“You’re right. Let’s restart. No lies.” I tuck a few strands of her wavy hair behind her ears. “I’m Jatin Naupure, and I’m not a murderer or a mistress.”
“Are you trying to remind me of all the embarrassing things I’ve said to you?”
“Well, they did make me come to know your rambling problem and your constant implications of how you could kill me.” I smile.
“It’s for your safety. You are more careless and accident-prone than I am.”
