Page 79 of A Match Made in Error

Too built for war and not enough for softness.

Afraid that if she looked at me with clarity instead of heat—if she saw all of me and decided against it—it would confirm every quiet suspicion I’ve carried since I was a boy standing in a house that never felt like home. That she would never want me. Wouldn’t miss me if I were gone. Like my parents. Like my family in Ombra that never reached out after I left. Like every woman I’d ever met before her.

It would make me broken in all the ways I’ve always thought I am. So I pushed it down and became her friend and bedded any maiden who looked twice at me until I forgot I had ever felt this way about her at all. That was, until I took that potion and was forced to face the truth.

My hand drifts across her skin before I can stop it. Her fingers brush mine, and neither of us pulls away, but neither of us crosses the final distance either. The space between us is narrow. A barrier thin enough to break if I wanted.

I could turn into her.

I could say it.

I could risk it.

Instead, I let my hand rest there, barely touching hers.

Just to know she’s still here.

Far enough to pretend I’m still in control.

Her thumb shifts against my knuckle. A question, perhaps, but I won’t answer it.

The ocean wind moves over us, cool against the heat pooling low in my stomach, against the ache in my chest that has nothing to do with desire.

She exhales softly, still not asleep.

Waiting.

And maybe, so am I.

We lie here in the same chaise, separated by a breath’s distance and a hundred unspoken things.

And for the first time in years—I am more afraid of love than I ever was of war.

Afraid of a soft smile that hits me like a spell she doesn’t know she’s casting. Of every laugh we share behind the bar at work that hits me straight in my ribs. Of every reminder that she’s the only woman whose happiness still actually means something to me.

It’s the reason I never pursued her after our first match. The kind of joy she has doesn’t match my darkness. I would suffocate her. Her magic lights the room brighter than lanterns ever could, and it would only be snuffed out by my shadows. Her heart is too pure for me. I knew it the first time I saw the soft crease between her brows when she was worried about me. I pretended I didn’t notice, but Fate, I did. No one had cared about me in so long, and there was a witch I’d just met, distraught that I’d cut my hand open on a broken glass behind the bar, tending to the wound like it was fatal.

All of that combined with the way she looks in the light of the moons right now makes me want to turn over and kiss her.

But just one taste would never be enough, and her ruination is a price I’d never pay.

Chapter Twenty-Six

RIVEN

Poppy’s shuddering gasp wakes me from my sleep.

Something is wrong.

My eyelids blink hazily but take in snapshots of my surroundings rapidly like I was trained to do in times of war. We’re on the patio still, having fallen asleep wrapped around one another on the chaise. The night sky is littered with flashes of lightning that promise rain will come soon, but instead of the fresh scent of ozonic air, a musty rancid aroma litters the air around us.

Poppy shrinks deeper into my arms, face burrowed into my bicep. “Riven,” she whimpers, words shaking as her eyes remain glued to something to the left.

My shadows respond to the tremor in her voice, flooding in around us as my eyes adjust to the darkness to see shadows that don’t belong to me shuffling around.

“Well, isn’t this sweet?” a raspy voice asks mockingly, earning chuckles from at least four other men.

My heart stutters.