Page 121 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

I dropped back to the ground, shaking and suddenly dizzy at the feel of his blood on my hands. Before I could feel tears sting my eyes and a cry pushed from my throat, I got up and poured all the liquor I found in the cabinets on my hands until the blood was scrubbed off.

He laid with his eyes closed, but they peeled open when I returned to his side, holding a candle. “I’m sorry,” I said, pushing hair away from his sweaty brow.

“Sorry?” he breathed out, forcing a smile on his lips. “Bird, this is the best day ever.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated.

He lifted a hand to my face, brushing my tears away. “Come here.”

Careful not to hurt his wound, I laid beside him.

“Maybe I should get injured more often,” he murmured in my hair.

When I looked up at him, he breathed out a heavy sigh and left a kiss on my brow and then another on my eye. They were gentle pecks. Nothing that should have stirred so many memories. His nose touched mine and it was too little time to comprehend anything before his mouth was pressed against mine. Gently at first. Then the little pecks he gave me turned into lingering kisses, and before we both knew, he’d pressed me under him, his tongue pushing against mine while the kiss burned.

Ten years.

Ten long years since I’d felt anything.

Ten years since the day he’d decided to leave me. And he’d only done so because he’d always known he’d do so—that he’d leave me one way or another.

He was thinking of leaving me again, wasn’t he?

“Are you kissing me because you think you’re going to die?” We were two people who kissed only when the world was ending. Houses on fire, earth breaking, skies falling. And my world felt like it was ending.

“I’m kissing you because I might die if I don’t.”

“Was that a secret?”

“No.”

“So you don’t want me to keep it?”

“Not this one. Do you want a secret?” he slurred, a pained moan following, and he held me tighter against him.

He had to be in excruciating pain from the craft poison and there was nothing I could do but talk to him. “Only if you want me to have it.”

His hand moved from my back till it rested on the nape of my neck, fingers tracing my skin until it had lit like a match. “That night we spent in Hellas, that night was the last time I touched a woman. It was also the first time I’d touched a woman in a long while. I was so close, so close to giving it all up and making you mine. And you would have let me, wouldn’t you?”

I shook my head. “But…but you went to Celia.”

His brows pulled together. “Who? Oh, tossed her a bag of coins to keep her blabbering. I should have known she’d show up at the castle to know why I wasn’t paying her anymore when Silas took me to Isjord.”

“Why would you do that?”

“It worked, didn’t it? You were disgusted by me.”

I pulled back and he hissed. “I was not.”

He dragged me closer to him again. “You were.”

“The only thing that disgusts me is the fact that you had to go that length instead of telling me the truth. I would have stayed away from you.”

“You would have?”

“It would have been hard, but I would’ve.”

“I wouldn’t have, though.”