I try to smile, but my mouth trembles. “I’m alive.”
That’s all I manage before he reaches me.
One hand comes to my face, the other to my waist, stopping just short of the bandage like he’s afraid the wrong touch will make me vanish.
His eyes move over me wildly. My face. My throat. My arms. My side. “You’re hurt.”
“I’m okay.”
“You were shot.”
“Yes.”
His jaw tightens.
“Not badly,” I say quickly. “The doctor said I was lucky.”
His eyes come back to mine, and there’s nothing controlled in them now.
Not anger. Not yet.
Worse.
Fear.
I’ve never seen it on him like this. Not hidden, not buried under threats, not shaped into commands. Just fear, raw and terrible, because for a few hours he believed I was gone.
“I found your ring,” he says.
My throat closes. “I know.”
“There was blood.”
“I know.”
His hand tightens against my cheek, and then he pulls me into his arms.
I gasp because it hurts.
He starts to release me immediately, but I grab his coat and hold on.
“No,” I whisper. “Don’t.”
He goes still for half a second. Then he wraps himself around me more carefully, one arm across my back, the other behind my head. His body is warm and solid and alive. I press my face into his chest and breathe him in under the smoke, blood, and gunpowder.
“I’m sorry,” I say into his coat. “I never should have left the house without telling you. And then he tried…”
“Shh it’s okay,” he says. “You’re here now that’s all that matters.”
“I pushed him away.”
“I know.”
I pull back enough to look at him. “You do?”
His thumb brushes my cheek. “I know you.”
The words break something in me. I nearly cry then, in the middle of that ruined corridor, with guns still raised and Dmitri bleeding only a few feet away.
