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Because Myron is a friend, too, I tell myself. But there’s little I can do to convince myself that’s all he is. Friends don’t stare at each other with eyes full of fire. They don’t devour each other in breathtaking kisses, don’t make you question with a touch if you’ve ever felt alive before.
“He was a good Crow.” Myron braces his weight on the threshold as he waits for me to cross, and the space between the ancient wooden frame is suddenly too tight not to make awareness flood my entire system.
“He was.” I don’t even know what agoodCrow is. If there is a definition of good and bad in his world other than being on his side or the side against him. I’ve seen how ruthless he can be when it comes to defending what is his, what he believes in, the limits he’s willing to push even when it means he needs to destroy himself in order to make sure his people will be released from their curse.
And there it is, like a thread of silver streaming through my chest to envelop my heart in a woven sheath of dread: Myron isgood.Everything he does is to protect, to save his people. Even those who work against him he is striving to free. He might be willing to make sacrifices when it comes to those who’d rather see him dead, but he isn’t out there waging war. He’s not torturing his brides, not forcing them to serve him in any way. He’s a good male. No matter what he believes.
And he’s given up on himself because he thinks he isn’t worthy of being saved.
My heart cracks all over again as I find those all-black eyes staring back at me, find my hand resting lightly upon the bruise over his heart—like I can do anything to protect the organ nestled under that silken skin, those solid muscles, the ribs enclosing it like a cage. He is in a prison of his own. One of the mind.
“Ayna—”
I barely register he’s spoken my name. It’s become second nature to hear it from his lips, to relish the way his deep timbre wraps around it.
Only when he sways do I realize he is trying to tell me to get inside so he can close the door and sit or lie down—or slump right there on the hardwood floor. I rush over the threshold, securing his arm over my shoulder as I help him toward the bed. Behind us, the door slides shut with a soft click as if Myron can barely expend enough power to move the wood.
My shoulders are aching, my legs less and less steady under the strain of his increasing weight as his strength is fading with each pace we make it closer to the bed. When we are a step away, he collapses into a half-sitting position at the edge of the mattress, the feathers quivering on his shaking wings, but his hand slides around mine, holding on for dear life.
“Thank you.”
Again, I shush him, freeing my hand to gently push him back onto the bed before helping him bring his legs up onto the mattress. “You need to rest.” Not that I know the least bit of what a Crow needs after draining themselves of their power and being physically injured.
Myron smiles, eyes closing as his head rests on the pillow I sleep on every night. “I was serious earlier. I don’t know nearly enough about you, Ayna. Tell me something that a spy or a prison guard cannot tell me about you.”
I’m still trying to adjust to how his weak tone affects me but gratefully take the moment to study him without having his scrutiny upon me. It’s a new feeling, one of vulnerability—his rather than mine—and it has nothing to do with his physical state. This is about him opening a window I’ve tried so desperately to keep closed and him creeping through even when he’s not trying to.
Perhaps it is the fact that he isn’t trying to achieve anything other than tuning out the pain while he recovers that makes me respond. “I killed the man I loved.”
My hand is shaking as hard as his were before, but he catches it in a talon-tipped one of his own, clutching it tightly as he presses it back to his chest, right over his heart. “A knife killed Captain Ludelle.”
I don’t know how he knows Ludelle’s name or why his words hurt so much when he’s basically giving me absolution, and I don’t even want to go into what Ludelle’s name on his lips does to me.
“I might as well have been the one wielding it.” Tears shoot to my eyes without my permission, my chin crumpling as I press my mouth into a tight line against the sob building in my throat.
The kindness in Myron’s eyes should no longer surprise me, yet it does as he lifts his head an inch as if trying to sit up. Blowing out a breath, he slumps back into the pillows as if this attempt cost him more even than opening and closing the door. “It was his choice. He tried to save you, Ayna. If nothing else, that should teach you how much he cared for you.”
There is no holding back the sob this time because there is a new guilt building in my chest even as the truth of his words settles deep inside of me. I did love Ludelle. I loved him with my whole heart. But there’s a part of me that has only recently come to life under the watchful eyes of the Crow King—and even when I can’t allow myself to love Myron, I can’t deny that I’m falling for him. Slowly, reluctantly, but I’m halfway there.
There is another thing I can’t deny: If he won’t return to his grumpy, distant self any time soon, I can’t guarantee that I won’t crash through the second half of that path to heartbreak. Because if there is one thing I know for certain, it is that if I allow myself to love this male and lose him, there will be no recovering.
Thirty-Four
I sitwith Myron half the night as he rests on his plush bed, the blue cotton sheets exactly where I draped them over his form when he fell asleep through our conversation. Telling him about pirate life was supposed to take his mind off the pain—that of his physical injuries as much as that of the betrayal.
“I’ll talk to Royad as soon as he shows up,” I told Myron right before promising I wouldn’t wander off alone to find the Crow.
“We can’t rely on the lake to follow you everywhere,” he joked when I’d explained how the water from the sacred chamber had allowed me to wield it. Whether it was a one-time rescue aid or a permanent partnership remains to be determined.
Now, Myron is sleeping, his midnight lashes two half-moons below his puckered brows. Even when he’s drifted off, the pain and signs of exhaustion don’t seem to leave his body. Only the purple bruises are slowly retreating beneath my fingers while his hand hasn’t released mine from where he’s holding it over his heart.
“You know I sailed the seas for years?” he says, almost making me slide off the edge of the bed where I’ve been perched all night, unable to bring myself to pull away when his grasp is the only way he allowed himself to tell me he needs my support. A soft smile curves his mouth as his eyes open, finding me panting as I bring my pulse back to a reasonable pace. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“I thought you were sleeping.” Or I wouldn’t have continued to murmur to him long after I assumed he’d drifted off. Wouldn’t have whispered how much I love the dirty teal the Quiet Sea turns the morning after a storm or how my heart sings when I look east to where nothing but freedom is calling. How Ludelle had promised me we’d sail there one day. How I hate myself for not having listened to him and just set sail and disappeared. How I no longer hate this place entirely. How there is a part of me that sees beauty in the grayscale of Crow life. How my human heart might be a speck of color even when I bleed more easily than any of the Crows do. Howheis one of the reasons I no longer hate it here.
“Healing requires more of a sentient stasis.”
Hence the not-letting-go of my hand since his fingers release mine pretty quickly now that he’s out of said stasis.
