Page 53 of Drown Me Gently

“When I saw you begin to drift from me,” Ulric continued, not looking at him, “when I thought I was losing you…”

He rubbed at his mouth with the back of his hand, as though trying to smother the admission. His foot tapped against the wood floor, restless.

“I panicked. I tried tying you to me. Tried dragging you down into the black deep. Into the only world I’ve ever known how to exist in.”

His eyes lifted then, meeting Auren’s with raw and bottomless vulnerability.

“I should’ve realized… I couldn’t harness someone as brilliant as the sun, and never expect them to look to the sky.”

Ulric clasped his hands together, his head dropping to them as though in prayer.

“Forgive me, Auren. This… your pain. It’s my fault. If I’d been more forthcoming, if I’d revealed what I knew of the surface world, this all could have been avoided.”

The silence that followed was thick with everything unspoken. The steady pulse of the sea beyond the window. The crackle of the fire. And the aching beat of Auren’s heart. The rapid rush of blood in his veins.

He moved without thinking. Sidling across the mattress, his knee brushing Ulric’s thigh, eyes never leaving the older man’s face. He was trembling—not from fear, not this time. From want. From everything that was buried for so long, it took root in his bones.

“I thought for the longest time I’d only be the ‘young prince’ to you,” Auren whispered. “That you’d never see me. Never see me for who I am.” His cheeks flushed. Heat crept up his neck, but he didn’t stop. “I wanted you to see me so badly.”

Ulric didn’t move, the tips of his thumbs pressing into his brow as his eyes closed tight as though he were in pain.

“I saw you, Auren,” Ulric whispered. “I’ve always seen you.” His voice fractured like sea glass underfoot. “And in four centuries, nobody has ever tempted me to break my vow⁠—”

He stopped short, jaw tightening.

Ulric sat up on a gasp, reaching out, cupping Auren’s cheek in his palm. His thumb brushed along the ridge of Auren’s cheekbone, feather-light. He tipped his face up with a tenderness that made Auren’s breath hitch.

“Nobody has ever left me so utterly helpless. So completely at their mercy as you have, Auren. My spriteling.”

Auren’s breath caught. He searched Ulric’s face, saw the war behind his dark eyes. Guilt battling desire.

“I let duty keep me from you,” Ulric said at last. “Then I let my own selfishness shackle you to the seafloor.”

His forehead touched Auren’s.

“I’m so sorry.”

Auren pulled back—just enough to search those eyes. Those fathomless, storm-dark eyes that saw too much. He searched for regret. For restraint. For the glimmer of warning that usually came when Ulric got too close.

But there was nothing.

No push. No rejection.

Just Ulric, watching him with an intensity that made the world quiet.

Auren’s breath stuttered. “Kiss me,” he whispered.

The shock in Ulric’s gaze made Auren think he’d said the wrong thing. That, once again, he was going to be pushed away. But that only lasted a second. And, as though waiting for permission, Ulric closed the space between them until their mouths met.

It started slow—lips brushing lips, breaths mingling—but the moment they touched, something inside Auren broke open.

A dam. A floodgate. A lifetime of need.

Tears sprang to his eyes and ran down either side of his face. Overcome by the sheer relief of it. The crashing, soul-deep relief of being wanted—openly, freely, without rules or shame. Every breath he hadn’t allowed himself to take, every whisper of longing he’d tried to drown, surged to the surface in that one, trembling second.

Ulric let out a sigh, and it was as though the seafloor itself had fractured.

Auren held that sigh in his mouth, and it tasted like years.