Page 39 of Hearts Lost

“Thank you,” he replies.

His lip twists into the barest suggestion of a smile, and I completely forget all the words I’ve learned in my entire life. When he takes the fabric from my hand, his fingers brush mine. I feel that touch all the way through to my toes.

Fuck. Me. This is not good. I need to put the reins on this right now, or things are going to get out of hand. I sit down, toss another broken branch on the fire, and try to act like a normal person and not someone whose pulse is hammering so hard they can probably hear it in King Grathgore’s court. I pull in a deep breath and tell myself to just get this over with, damn it. Just rip the bandage off the open wound that’s my stupid, stupid heart and ask him.

“So,” I say. “You’re probably married?”

Aloserin looks up from the strip of my sleeve that he’s tying around his knee. His eyebrows are raised, and he looks almost amused.

“Betrothed?” I stammer.

“No,” he says gently. “I’m not married. Or betrothed.”

I try very hard not to sigh in relief. Aloserin finishes tying the bandage with a neat little knot, then stretches his leg out on the grass.

“Are you?” he asks.

I make a sound that was supposed to be a laugh but comes out as a sharp little snort.

“No,” I say. “It’s not a good idea in the Royal Guard, you know.”

Aloserin frowns at me. I pluck a strand of grass and focus on twisting it into a knot to avoid meeting his eyes.

“Getting attached to anyone is dangerous,” I say, pushing the words out before I can change my mind. “It’s like handing the king a stick he can use to beat you. You do something wrong, and suddenly it’s not your head on the chopping block, it’s your lover’s. Or your sister’s.”

My cheeks burn and my voice falters. I tug on the grass too hard, and the knot falls apart in my hands.

“It’s not like that in the Kingdom of the Fall,” Aloserin says, still in that gentle voice, as if I were a horse who may bolt. “But I understand exactly what you mean.”

I glance up, startled, but he’s not looking at me. His lips are pressed into a tight line, and he’s staring off into the shadows beneath the trees like he’s worried he’s going to be overheard.

“Your family?” I guess.

He sighs, and his shoulders drop. My chest aches; suddenly, I want to touch him so badly that it burns. I twist my fingers together in my lap, trying to strangle that impulse.

“Yes,” he answers, in a whisper, and there’s so much weight and pain packed into that one little word that I want to open my mouth and scream at both of the worlds that have fucked us over so completely.

“Shit,” I snap, anger taking over my mouth before my mind can intervene. “That sucks.”

A look of surprise flickers over Aloserin’s delicate, fire-lit features, and then he laughs. It’s a beautiful, glorious laugh, and for a heartbeat, I feel like my chest has cracked wide open.

“Shit,” Aloserin agrees, smiling at me. “It really does suck.”

He pats the grass beside him. It’s a gesture that could mean many things, but I take it as an invitation. I move until I’m sitting next to him, close enough to feel the warmth of his body seeping into the space between us. Aloserin reaches for my hand and threads his fingers through mine.

“I am sorry,” he says. Our eyes meet; everything inside me pulls taut and pushes forward, falling toward him. “I never should have run away.”

“I’m sorry too,” I reply.

My voice feels thin and light, like I’m the one who’s been running. Aloserin’s lips twist into that beautiful, painful curl, the one that looks like there’s a smile buried deep beneath all his years of martial training and generations of royal ancestry, just trying to break through.

“I don’t have much experience with this,” he says, and stars, he’s so close now that I can feel the whisper of his breath across my lips.

“Neither do I,” I answer, leaning toward him, my heart fluttering in the palm of my hand, in the places where our fingers interlace.

“We shouldn’t—” he whispers.

And then our lips meet in the space between our bodies, and he kisses me with a softness, a delicacy, that I would have thought only exists in fairy tales. He kisses me like a man who’s been waiting his entire life for this moment, like he’s going to take his sweet time. My eyes flutter closed and my mouth opens for him, and he’s there, sliding into me, taking what was sweet and gentle and turning it into something fiercer, something far more urgent.