But her hands stay open.
Syrenne rises from her seat. Ember rises with her. She walks toward the exit, her heat trail marking the stone behind her. As she passes the place where I stand, she pauses. She catches my eye.
Smiling. Undiminished. Warm and sharp.
“Well spoken,” she says. Then her eyes shift to Maximus. “Both of you.”
She walks out. The shimmer fades behind her.
The courts disperse.
Maximus turns me into him. His arms close around me. The hall is nearly empty.
I press my forehead to his chest. The mark warms through his shirt. I breathe.
“You were shaking,” he says. Against my hair.
“Only my hands. The rest of me knew what to do.”
His hand slides up to the back of my neck under my hair. His fingers there are gentle. Careful. Underneath, his body is rigid. It passes between us where we’re pressed together.
“You stopped me from taking the floor again,” he says.
“You’d already said your part.”
His other hand slides up my spine and stays there. The kiss he presses to the top of my head is slow.
“Tell me what came through when I finished,” I say.
A pause.
“Later.”
“Tell me now.”
He pulls back enough to look at me. His eyes do the thing they do when his control cracks.
“You looked like the room belonged to you,” he says.
I close my eyes for one second. Let that land.
When I open them, I straighten, wipe my palms on my pants, and take in the amphitheater.
“What did Ithara say?” I ask. “The stone remembers what the blood has not yet learned. What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Seraphina went pale.”
“I saw.”
His thumb traces the M and C crest on my ring. Then he lifts my hand and presses his mouth to the soft inside of my wrist. The kiss is slow. His teeth catch on the skin for half a second. A bite he doesn’t finish. The heat under it moves through me anyway.
I take his hand. He doesn’t let go.
We walk out of the convening hall together. We’ve just won this battle; now we have to continue to plan for the war.
Chapter
