Page 51 of Sworn to the Shadow Throne

Did that mean she…

Lunette finally looked up at me, and the steadiness in her expression was the bravest thing I’d ever seen. She was confirming my suspicion but wasn’t asking for my approval or sympathy. She was simply showing me the full truth of herself and waiting, without flinching, to see what I’d do with it.

Like floodwater rises slowly through the floor, grief found its way in beneath the awe I held for her. She’d been carrying this alone for…how long? Even a day was too much. Every single raid was the direct consequence of a kingdom that had looked away from its borders. Berian’s refusal to do anything for his kingdom’s poorest had led this woman to become the last mercy for its dying people.

Cursed gods, a kingdom with my name on its army’s banners.

But I couldn’t confess to her like I wanted to. Not with danger so close. So I held it behind my teeth and let it settle into the place where I pushed down all my regrets.

If I couldn’t offer her my complete truth, I could still share a piece of it. “You’ve been cleaning up the mess our king should’ve prevented a long time ago,” I said at last, my voice coming out rougher than I’d intended.

“Someone had to,” she whispered. There was a look of profound fatigue in her expression, the kind that comes from holding something heavy for such a long time that remembering life without it seems impossible.

“They were lucky it was you,” I murmured back.

It was my turn to confess because I had to know, after what she’d just seen, if she thought me a monster. “I… My people have called me a demon since my magic manifested, Lunette. My shadows scare them. Children run away from me the second they see my eyes change. And you just saw me kill two men…”

I studied her face far longer than politeness allowed, waiting, braced for the moment she’d finally realize what she’d let into her home.

Instead of looking at me with judgment, she joined me at the table and reached out to give my hand a quick, reassuring squeeze.

I savored her approval, but it couldn’t quite silence the discontent. “Lunette, you don’t have to be the caregiver right now.” I lifted my hand and folded it to envelop hers. “You’re not what others say…unless they call you magnificent.”

She smiled softly, yet it was enough to form gentle creases at the corners of her eyes. When she squeezed my hand back, the contact sent a sharp, electric sensation up my arm, shocking my mind to new awareness.

I’d meant every word I said about her. But as I looked at our joined hands, a hypocritical truth stared back at me. It was easy to defend her worth, yet I denied myself that very same mercy. She’d seen more of who I truly was than almost anyone else—as much as Camrick and Reina—and yet she still acted as if she saw the spark of good in me amongst all the bad. Perhaps I was simply horrible at seeing myself.

Maybe some good still existed within me. I would never hurt her. Would never put her at risk. That meant I had to do the hard thing because it was the right thing.

So I said, “I need to leave sooner than I thought. Tonight. Tomorrow, at the latest.” Before my enemies decide you’re leverage.

Wanting me alive meant they wouldn’t stop. My mere presence was a danger to her.

I stood, intending to clear our plates—she’d already done far too much—but pain shot from my waist straight down my leg, and I stumbled before I could hide it.

Her gaze dropped. Standing, she hissed, “You’re hurt. Sit.”

I glanced down. She wasn’t wrong. The fight had torn stitches loose; she just couldn’t see the blood because my borrowed tunic was black.

A heartbeat later, she was kneeling beside me.

“It’s nothing,” I managed, which would’ve been more convincing if my voice hadn’t cracked like a boy’s.

Her head snapped up, eyes blazing. “You swung a sword with a partially healed wound. Of course it’s something.”

I opened my mouth to make some idiotic reassurance, to pretend I wasn’t one breath away from blacking out, but she was already lifting my tunic. Her warm fingers unwrapped the bandage slowly. She gasped at the bloom of red now dripping down my side.

“Lunette,” I said. “It’s fine.”

“It is not fine,” she said, voice sharp as tempered steel. “Just a little…”

Before I could summon another lie, her fingertips pressed lightly against my skin. Pleasant shocks rippled across it. Then warmth spread through me slowly, the itching sensation dissolving the pain little by little.

Before I could stop them, my eyes closed in reverence. I’d fallen so hard and so fast for this woman.

She was unbearably gentle. Too kind. Too perfect. Two delicate hands had disarmed me more neatly than any duel I’d ever fought. I knew deep down that if she ever touched me with meaning, I wouldn’t, couldn’t deny her.

It was building something fragile on a lie, but I still placed my hand over hers. The pull was simply too strong to resist, and I was tired of fighting.