Page 40 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

Because you’d stop. I didn’t want you to stop. “You were not here,” I said, sitting up.

Her mouth parted and closed a few times before she said, “I went for a walk.”

“It was a long walk.”

“It was.”

“Did you go alone?”

It took her a moment to answer me. “No. My wolves were with me.”

When I stood, she took a step back, putting more distance between us. I decided to stay where I was. Didn’t know if I could stand seeing her walk away from me. But I did deserve that. “That night—”

She took a few more steps away and lifted a palm to me. “Don’t.”

“I shouldn't have done what I did.”

“Don’t really care.”

“If I meant to you just a fragment of what you mean to me, you do care,” I said, and she finally looked at me, her hand lowering just a little. “I shouldn’t have done what I did, Rora, but I did it, and I don’t regret doing it, just the way I did it. You relying on me was no different than me relying on a drink. If it had been someone else, someone better, they would have told you sooner.”

There was nothing subtle about the way Thora felt. Every little micro expression she wore carried more meaning than one had in their entire body. From the way her eyes hardened, how that very little dip between her brows tensed, or how the corners of her mouth pulled in just the very slightest, told me enough, told me more than words could, more than my magic could. “It was easier knowing you meant every word.”

“We never do anything easy.” When I stepped toward her again, she didn’t step away. “Me and you, sweetheart, we don’t like easy.”

“There is no me and you.”

There were merely a couple feet keeping me away from her. That and the fact she still hadn’t lowered her hand down. “There will always be me and you.”

“Things have changed.”

“Things can change however many times they wish,” I said, dropping back on the uncomfortable sofa I’d proclaimed as my bed. “Doesn’t mean I will comply with that change.”

“Our agreement hasn’t started yet. You can’t stay here.”

Fluffing my pillow, I got comfortable again. “Make me go.”

“Malik.”

“Harder. Try a little harder or get back in bed, little bird.” I tilted my head to her. “Unless you want to get in mine.”

Her frown deepened and deepened, and as she turned, she muttered, “You’ve lost your goddamn mind.”

“I will if you keep standing there in just that,” I said.

She stopped to give me an indecipherable look over her shoulder before she tucked herself in bed.

Chapter ten

The Past

Malik

I’d told her to keep a damn candle lit at night. Olympian nights were sometimes almost darker than in Adriata and she always ended up with a bruise or two in the morning when she got up to get water or use the bathroom. Of course, she had not listened to me. She laid on her stomach, face buried underneath a ton of black hair, her long nightgown had bunched around her hips, barely covering any of her. She’d also not listened to me when I’d asked her to return to Adriata. After six months in her father’s dungeons, returning to not see her lay in my bed was worse than Silas’s tortures. Even worse seeing a friend I’d considered a brother inviting her to his.

The drink in my hand had condensated, untouched, the ice melting and filling what little space was left in the glass. There was just one thing I was craving right now, and it wasn’t the drink I was holding.

The longer I stood there in a corner veiled by absolute darkness, watching her, the more I taught myself the one type of pain I’d missed when I’d learnt the entirety of the emotion. The one type of pain that seeped like poison and killed so slowly you wouldn’t even know you were dying.