Page 33 of The Last War We Ever Fought

“Don’t latch onto my words.”

“Let me, I beg.” He got up and kneeled before her. When she tried to lean away, he pinched her chin between his fingers, his thumb smoothing over her jaw. “Tell me how to charm you. If I say any more desperate things, the gods are going to look down on me.”

Her eyes drew closed and a small, drowned cry came from her parted lips. “Don’t do this, please.”

“Do what, Rowan?”

Again, she said nothing but looked at him with beseech, silently pleading with him as if she didn’t hold his heart in her hands.

Leaning in, he pressed his lips to her cheek, sighing a trembling exhale as he did so. Then he repeated it again. He kissed her face, his heart beating almost out of his chest from fear that she would ask him to stop.

She didn’t touch him back, she didn’t move at all, she simply let him.

When he rested his brow to hers, he noticed the unshed tears slowly roll down her cheeks. He would have leaned and kissed them all away, but he was entirely too fascinated to move.

She reached to wipe them away, but he grasped her wrist.

“There it is,” he said. “It was just hiding away.”

“What is?” she whispered.

“Your pretty soul.”

More tears drenched her skin.

“Why was it hiding?” he asked, swiping a thumb over her stray tears.

“Why are you doing this to me?”

“What am I doing to you, Rowan?” He had never wanted to know something more desperately. So desperately that he’d lay his Dawnbringer at her feet and ask her to take his life with his own blade before he’d have to wait another minute without her answer.

“I don’t want to hurt.”

“Is that why it was hiding away? Because you don’t want to hurt?”

“Elijah—”

“Yes, my little thief, invoke me, chant my name like a curse and let me haunt back those that have haunted you.”

Carefully, she reached to touch his face, her shaky hand freezing midway. The tips of her fingers had barely grazed his skin, but he let out a shuddering breath and drew his eyes shut. Tentatively, she skittered her barely there touch lower to brush her fingertips over his jaw. Even the ghost of a touch almost ruined him. He needed her to have mercy. He needed her to spare him even though he’d given her permission to be the one to end his life.

And then she did—she leaned in and pressed her lips to his jaw. Barely a touch. Barely a kiss. “Please go,” she breathed, dropping her head on his shoulder.

“Don’t ask me that.”

“You’re not mine, Elijah. I don’t want you to go, but you’re not mine. You belong to someone else. I can’t pretend nearly as well as you do.”

In all the time that he’d lived, he’d never felt his heart break the way it had at those words, at the anguish bleeding along them. How could he tell her—how could he tell her something he couldn’t speak of. How could he tell her that he belonged to her?

“Please go,” she said, pulling back and away from him, hugging her knees to her chest. “Elijah, please.”

“Wish I had not taught you this trick,” he said, reaching to leave a kiss on the crown of her head. “I have no choice but to obey.”

“Good night,” she said as he backed away to leave.

“Good night, my Rowan.”

Eight poppies