He’s quiet for a long moment. The kind of quiet that isn’t evasion but consideration—sorting through decades of memory to find something true enough to offer.
“And now?” I ask, when the silence stretches long enough.
“Now you’re here.” He says it simply. Like it’s the answer to everything. “And I’m remembering what it felt like to want something I couldn’t take by force.”
My chest aches. This man—this monster, this warden, this contradiction of violence and gentleness—has carved out space inside me that I didn’t know existed. He’s made me feel things I swore I’d never feel again.
He pulls me against him without asking, and I let him. We’ve already said the words about Cyrilla. The grief I carried into this forest has somewhere to land now—has had somewhere to land since the bone-pit hollow. But the absolution still feels new each morning, and I’m not yet sure how to wear it.
“You’ve carried this for a long time.” His voice rumbles against my ear. “Alone.”
“Who else was going to carry it?”
“No one.” His arms tighten around me. “That’s the problem. You’ve been alone with this grief for so long that you’ve forgotten what it feels like to share it.”
I don’t answer. Can’t answer. Because he’s right, and the truth of it cracks something open inside me that I’ve kept locked for years.
“I came here for revenge.” The admission slips out. “Against the forest. Against you. Against anything I could blame for her death.”
“And now?”
I pull back enough to look at him. Really look, the way I’ve been avoiding since this started. At the scars and the strength and the quiet desperation hidden behind his stillness. At the man who’s given me something I thought I’d lost forever.
“Now I don’t want to leave.”
His expression shifts. Something cautious entering the vulnerability I saw before.
“The forest won’t let you stay. Not permanently.” His hands find my hips, holding me in place. “You’re not bound to it the way I am. The moment you try to make this permanent, Briargrave will?—”
“Then bind me.”
He goes still. Completely, utterly still, the way the forest goes still before violence.
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I know exactly what I’m asking.” I grab his face, force him to look at me. “I’ve spent thirty years running. Place to place, job to job, never staying anywhere long enough to matter. Never letting myself belong anywhere because belonging meant losing, and I’d already lost too much.”
“Xela—”
“I came here planning to kill you and leave. That was the whole plan. Take your head, collect my payment, disappear into whatever corner of the Veillands would have me. Start over somewhere new, like I’ve done a dozen times before.”
“What changed?”
“You.” The word is simple. True.
His jaw clenches. I can see him fighting something—some instinct to pull away, to protect himself the way he’s been protecting himself for longer than I can imagine.
“I’m offering you a prison.” His voice is rough. Strained. “This forest is my cage as much as the King’s. If you bind yourself to it?—”
“You’re offering me you.” I grip the front of his armor, hold on. “A place to stand. A reason to stay. I don’t need more than this.”
He doesn’t answer. Just stares at me with those amber eyes, and I watch the war play out across his features—the longing and the fear and the desperate hope that he’s trying so hard to suppress.
“Tharos.” I say his name like a promise. “I’m not asking you to make the binding painless. I’m not asking you to pretend this isn’t dangerous. I’m asking you to let me choose this. Let me choose you.”
FORTY-FIVE
XELA
