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“Then don’t be nice.”
His brows lifted. “Should I turn around and give you my back again?”
“No!” I exclaimed. “I’ll get angry then, and I don’t want to do that either.”
He pulled his bottom lip between his teeth as if holding back a smile. “Then what would you like me to do, liessa?”
Gods.
Every time he called me that, I melted. It still melted me, but it also made me want to cry. Briefly closing my eyes, I ordered myself to pull it together. “I know you’re mad.”
“I’m not mad.”
My lips pursed. “You’re not?”
“I’m…” Ash shook his head. “Okay. I’m mad. But not at you.”
“I know you’re not mad at me,” I said. “And I know you don’t want to be here. You don’t want to do what you have to do.”
His nostrils flared.
“But I also know that you understand it has to be done. If there’s any hope of stopping Kolis and saving the realms, stopping the Rot. This is it. And I don’t want to waste what time we have left arguing over what we already know,” I told him. “I want you to listen to what I must tell you.”
Ash twisted his neck to the side, then gave me a curt nod.
All right, that wasn’t a vocalization, but it was better than nothing.
“I want you to know I love you,” I started. His eyes slammed shut, and my hands began trembling. “And I will not stop loving you. I wish I’d told you more than I have—gods, I wish I’d recognized what I felt long before I did.”
“I know,” he said, the two words sounding as if torn from the depths of his soul.
I stepped forward. “And I want you to know that none of this is your fault.”
Ash’s chest rose with a deep inhale.
“None of it,” I repeated.
“Sera.” He let out a scathing laugh and opened his eyes. Shadows appeared beneath his skin. “Do you know what I’d rather be doing right now?”
I could hazard a guess. “Anything else?”
He shook his head. “Not just anything else. I’ve thought of things.”
“Like…like what?”
“Teaching you how to swim,” he said without hesitation. My chest squeezed. “Showing you more of Iliseeum. Returning to the cavern—I think you liked it there.”
“I did,” I whispered.
“I would rather be lying in bed with you, sitting on the palace balcony together, getting you to tell me all the things you haven’t shared with me about when you grew up. Training with you. Fighting with you. Even arguing with you.” The shadows deepened under his flesh. “But the only reason we’re standing here, having this conversation instead of doing all those things—exploring the innumerable ways I’ve dreamt of fucking you—is because of what I’ve done.”
My mind got stuck on a specific part of what he’d said. “What are some of those innumerable ways?”
The change that came over Ash was swift and heady. His chin dipped, his striking features warming as the shadows disappeared. “I’d be more than happy to show you.”
Heat swamped my veins, which was so not helpful at the moment. I shook my head.
“You sure?” His silky voice stretched out like a tendril of dark mist, brushing against me.
