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“If I am to attack Ammarett come spring once the snow thawed, I will require your father’s army, and it will do me no good if I starved it over the winter,” he said. “I need this marriage if I want to win this war quickly and with few losses among my kind, Galantia. Webothneed it. And it is my hope that this will ease your fear and convince you of my sincerity. My… commitment to this.”
The assurance of his words soothed over my doubts, bringing with them a sense of relief. It lasted but a breath, the now undisputed and proven prospect of this marriage suddenly not enough, even if it ensured me my goal of a secured life. What was the worth of a silk gown if it cocooned a withered heart? What was the worth of a life if there was no love in it?
Sure, Sebian held me at night, gave me care, offered me refuge. But had he ever confessed any such feelings to me? Had he ever courted me? Kissed me?
No.
Not even a peck goodbye…
A cacophony of chuckles and laughs behind me had me glance over my shoulder at a group of young Ravens that sat around a pile of… things. Shreds of fabric. Polished seashells. Nails. A fork. One of the girls closed her eyes and reached into the pile, rummaging through it, only to retrieve what appeared to be a small piece of rust-speckled chainmail.
She opened her eyes.
Her nose wrinkled.
“That’s mine.” The young man sitting across from her leaned toward her, his grin framed by patchy stubble. “As are you, and you know it.”
The girl looked at the young man, then at the chainmail, curling a disgusted lip before she dropped the thing with aclankand rubbed the rust from her fingers on the leg of her cotton trousers. “In your dreams.”
“In my dreams, you’re lying in a nest of pillows and quilts, begging me to bond with spread legs,” he rasped to the deep-throated chuckles of the other boys and young men. Then, in one quick movement, he thrust himself forward and kissed her. A long, passionate kiss that had me shift my lips, curl my tongue, swallow excessively. “And if you’d stop being so fucking stub—”
Whack.
His face shot sideways at her slap against his cheek, his eyes ripped wide open in shock, much to the amusement of the others. They snickered and guffawed as the girl shifted and flew off, pushing and shoving him, giving him scolding slaps on the back of his head.
Malyr’s palm stroked over my hip, rolling me onto my other side to face the group fully before he pressed his body tight against my backside. “Presume I should count myself lucky that you only walked out on me during ourkjaerinstead of slapping me before the entire assembled court.”
The idea of slapping him for such a transgression seemed quite absurd, given how I longed to be kissed. “Presume you are right, but then again, you didn’t kiss me.”
“Oh, but I did,” he rasped, gliding his palm up along my waist, over my chest, only for his finger to swipe along my bottom lip. “When I fed you from my lips, little dove. It is the kiss of the raven, but a kiss nonetheless, reserved for our mate and no one but her. It is why we guard them so.”
His words caused my heart to catch before I looked over my shoulder back at him, finding his face inches from me, his eyes slipping to those lips he claimed he’d kissed before they locked with mine. Even firmly planted on the ground, a little sway went through my upper body. A reminder that, if I looked too deeply into his shadows, I might as well lose my balance and fall straight into their darkness to swallow me whole.
A gulp went down my throat. “Yet you kissed Lorn.”
“Fate is rarely obvious, and never easy. Few are those who recognize their mate upon first sight, like my father did. There are a great many feathers we might preen that turn out to be not ours to care for. Sometimes, beaks collide.” His arm came around my head, supporting the weight of it, keeping me embraced and urging my mouth closer to his. “Little dove, the wrong ones we kiss are considered, but the ones we never bother to kiss…? They are forever rejected.”
Rejected.
Forever.
A chill hit my core just as a wintery breeze rocked me closer into Malyr’s embrace. Was that why Sebian never kissed me? Because, deep down, he knew that I could be many things—bedmate, distraction, revenge. Heavens, perhaps even a sense of redemption whenever he took care of me, saved me, protected me.
But never his mate.
Never worthy of his death-defying love.
Anguish flooded my chest, making me close my eyes against the threat of tears over how nobody ever truly wanted me. Not my father. Not my mother. Not Sebian. Why was I never worthy of love? Never worthy of a kiss? Never worthy of—
Malyr’s exhale ghosted over my lips. His mouth drifted closer to mine as his fingers curled into my hair.
Then it happened.
Deep and devouring, his mouth slanted over mine in the darkness of my sealed eyes, sending a flare of heat through my core. His warm, wet tongue stroked apart my lips before it dipped inside, bringing with it the taste of berries that mixed with his scent of lemongrass and rose petals.
A kiss.
A real kiss.
