Page 63 of Sworn to the Shadow Throne

“Luna, I—”

The abbreviated name triggered a sudden, sharp pang in my chest. Unwilling to yield to the emotions welling in me, to the confusion, I looked away, teeth clenched so hard it hurt because I didn’t want to cry.

All I wanted to do was turn back time and start this all over again.

He shifted, and a flash of pain crossed his face, agitated shadows rising to the surface of his skin before he locked both down. Finally, he said, “I have to go with them.”

We were already over before we’d truly begun.

“I know,” I replied, my voice clipped. “You said that while you were still Rowan.”

His slow exhalation carried the weight of an exhausted man bracing himself to step into another battle. Then, very softly, as if afraid of how I’d react, he said, “Come with me.”

The suggestion hung in the silence between us, charging the air with terrifying impossibility.

I stared at him, at the prince standing in my broken doorway, with restless shadows creeping up his neck, asking me to cross a distance I’d only just learned to measure. Before he could stop them, the black lines spread across the back of his hands then disappeared as he clenched his fists.

He looked caged by his own skin. And for the first time since his horse had stumbled into my clearing, I didn’t know which of us was more afraid. I wanted to help. Wanted to comfort him.

The urge to say yes rose within me like a blizzard coming off the mountains. He was offering me a life away from Selmont. Where I could be someone new. Where I wasn’t alone.

I actually opened my mouth to answer. Then closed it. The word yes had been right there, but my throat closed around the confirmation I wanted to give him so badly.

For one humiliating heartbeat, I could only stare at him from my spot on the bed. I thought—we had both thought, surely—that this was only going to be a single, stolen night. It would end come morning, and my life would return to exactly as it had been before he showed up.

“Come with you?” I asked, my voice wavering only slightly. Visions of spending another night with him—one beneath the stars as we traveled away from this awful village, of having another quiet dinner with him, of actually enjoying this thing we’d only just started—filled my mind.

But those dreams were too dazzling, too perfect to be real for a woman like me. I’d learned, young and hard, that bright things drew attention. And attention in the borderlands meant danger.

Something like worry wiped the rest of Owain’s careful control from his expression, leaving him bare and unguarded.

“So,” I said, filling the space before it swallowed me whole, “you expect me to trail after you as a kept secret?” The last word tasted like dried blood, but I had to get it out. “Because I assure you, that is not my life goal, my prince.”

His eyes widened in shock. “Is this because I asked you to come inside? Lunette, I didn’t want to put pressure on you if you didn’t feel the way I do.” A sense of urgency propelled him forward, his limp momentarily forgotten as he moved.

Careful to leave a polite distance, he sat down on the edge of the bed beside me, the rushes of the mattress giving slightly to his heavier weight. He held his hands so rigidly on his thighs his knuckles were white, as if holding them there was the only thing keeping him from reaching out.

I wished he would…

“Never a secret,” he said, though he sounded less sure of that than I would’ve liked—or maybe that was my own fear painting his words.

A tremor shot through me at his proximity, at the quiet promise of what could be brushing against my skin.

He exhaled a gust, turned to me, and then reached out. With heartbreaking gentleness, he touched my shoulder then slid his hand down my arm. I began to lean toward him but caught myself before I fell under his spell yet again.

“Leave Selmont,” he urged, finally resting his hand atop mine. My heart broke a little more with each drag of his thumb. “You’ll be safe. You deserve more than this village gives you. More than they let you be. The Tir needs healers like you—people like you.”

Everything he said snagged on my deepest desires.

His gaze flicked briefly to my horribly patched roof, to the shattered door. “You wouldn’t have to barter for food anymore. You wouldn’t have to put up with Elbort to get your roof patched!”

So, he’d noticed my worry about that too. He saw too much, too deep.

My breath hitched, and a surprised, half-delirious laugh burst out of me. “I’m the only person keeping this village from burning to the ground.”

“Lunette.” His fingers found mine, curling around them. “You don’t owe them your entire life.”

“This is what I’m meant for.” My eyes burned.