His jaw tightens. “Your heart had stopped.”
“So you put yourself in it?”
“Yes.”
“Without asking me?”
His eyes burn darker. “You were not available for consultation.”
“That is not funny.”
“I did not intend humor.”
“No, you intended control,” I say, stepping closer as heat rises through my chest. “You intended to decide that because you could not bear losing me, you were allowed to make me into something else.”
His voice lowers. “I intended you to live.”
The bond flares harder.
The room brightens around us, ward sigils answering the surge in steady gold-red light. My anger rushes into him, and his fear rushes into me, not as confession but as force. It is immense. It is ruthless. It is the kind of fear that would tear down a realm rather than speak its own name.
I stop two steps from him. “You cannot keep doing this.”
“Saving you?”
“Choosing for me.”
His control cracks just enough to let the truth show through. “I watched your pulse vanish.”
I feel the memory in him as he says it: the slab, the black veins, my body limp in his arms, silence where the bond should have been. His pain hits me so hard my eyes sting.
I grab his collar.
He goes still.
“You should have asked,” I whisper.
“Yes.”
The admission breaks something in me far more effectively than argument would have.
I pull him down and kiss him.
There is nothing gentle in the first contact. It is fierce, furious, possessive, and deliberate, a collision of anger and relief that neither of us bothers disguising as restraint. His hands close around my waist, not careful now in the distant way he used to be, but certain. He holds me as if the world has already tried to take me once and he has decided the world can bleed for trying again.
I kiss him harder because I understand that feeling too well.
The bond surges between us, pulse answering pulse until my heartbeat and his immortal rhythm fall into alignment. Heat rolls through my veins, gold and red, not consuming me but expanding the space inside my own skin. His fear steadies when I touch him. My anger steadies when he holds me. Every synchronized pulse makes him more solid and me more awake.
Corin clears his throat from the stairs.
I break the kiss just enough to glare. “Do not.”
He lifts both hands, already backing away. “I am stepping outside with dignity and a profound commitment to denial.”
“Good.”
“Also, the wards just changed color, so whatever you are doing is probably working.”
