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“And I?” she asked him.
“You what?”
“Have I improved, in your estimation? Or am I still the same lying, filthy mortal I once was?”
“YouknowI don’t think that,“ he said, coming closer. “You know I have nothing but the highest admiration for you. Annoyingly high, actually. Frustratingly.Distractingly.Every day, I am more and more impressed by you and…”
“And?”
His hands returned to her side, skimming against the blackthorn ring she’d threaded next to her pendant, now lying on the mattress beside her. “Why are you wearing this?” he asked her.
“Why did you give it to me?”
“I suppose I wanted you to have something of mine,” he admitted.
“Then I suppose I wanted something to keep you close.”
At this stark confession, his eyes widened, as if certain he’d misheard. He bent his head towards her, breath brushing her face. “I’d really like to kiss you again now.”
Juliana’s throat tightened. No longer could she convince herself that it was a side-effect of the pendants, that some other force drew them together… and even though she knew that it would hurt, that she was sharpening a sword destined for her own chest… she no longer cared to resist.
Her fingers unfurled around his face, tugging him gently towards her, his dark lashes fanning shut. “Just a kiss?” she questioned.
Hawthorn paused, eyes flickering open. “If you wish it.”
Juliana closed the gap between them, conscious in a heady, light-headed way of the chappedness of her lips next to the smoothness of his, but hardly caring. His mouth pressed hers, soft, sweet, hard, lingering against her like the first sip of wine.
It was never going to be just a kiss, and despite the bruised form of her body, her insides ached for him.
“Hawthorn?”
“Yes?”
A silly request. A foolish one. It wasn’t like he had anywhere else to be, and besides, she wouldn’t be able to feel him when she was asleep anyway—
And yet, as much as she loathed to admit it, she wanted him there. Wanted it with a pain that felt like need, like his presence was sustenance she fed from.
“Will you stay?” she asked. “Even after… even after I fall asleep?”
Hawthorn brushed back her hair. “I would stay with you forever, if you wished it.”
A strange statement. Perhaps she’d misheard, or there was some lie in it she couldn’t quite decipher. She was tired, after all, so tired…
She’d deconstruct it in the morning, when her wounds were healed, when she wasn’t so woozy, when the world made sense again.
In the meantime, words blossomed on her tongue, unbidden. “I do wish it,” she told him. “That’s rather the problem, really.”
The next day, plied with potions and with nothing else to do but rest, Juliana picked up Hawthorn’s notebook and read. Luckily, the witch had brought Juliana’s belongings with her.
And Dillon’s, which would have to be returned to his father in time.
Juliana couldn’t bring herself to look through his pack, too afraid of thenothingnessthat it would contain, the supplies and equipment that contained nothing of whoDillonwas.
She shelved the rawness in her chest, refusing to give weight to it. If she fell apart now, it might drag her under.
She focused on the notebook instead. It was better than dwelling on the pain, on her grief, on the slow, restless task of healing, a monster of necessity and one she could not fight.
“You’re sure Hawthorn isn’t here?” she asked, fingers tracing the pages.
