Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 84840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
My lungs deflate and I burrow into his nooks until I can hear the rapid pound of his heart. I can’t leave him here to face the eve of battle on his own. All is fair in war. I find his hand, thread our fingers, and tuck his arm to my chest. Just for tonight.
We’re supposed to sleep, rest before the unknowns morning will bring, but I keep stirring at every worried twist of my stomach, and Quin keeps stroking my hair or rubbing my back or holding me tighter against him. Each squeeze feels like magic, like a connecting force ties us together. Its calming and addictive, and soon I’m stirring for more of that strength flowing from him into me. It must be magic, and yet, he’s using none.
I shift my leg and his breath shudders into my hair, his arms tightening around me more than all the times before, and my own breath hitches at the feel of him, a rigidness that I don’t know what to do with—even though my own responds, flooding me with syrupy heat that feels achy and shivery and ticklish. Like a different kind of magic that’s linking something emotional with something physical.
I swallow thickly and my hand shakes as I slowly press against his chest and try to move away.
Quin doesn’t let me; he holds me hostage in this thickening feeling and his lips brush my ear. I can feel them curving. “You did once promise you could make that happy, remember?”
The lovelight festival, the restaurant, my naïve thought he struggled to be physically intimate . . . I’d thought he’d meant he needed healing . . .
I flush and something between outrage and mortification slips out of my mouth.
Quin laughs against the sound, stopping it with a press of his warm lips that freezes me mid-shiver. “You were so unbelievable,” he murmurs, “and I was utterly charmed.”
“Quin . . .” I barely manage to get that out.
He understands what I’m unable to articulate. What I don’t want to do, and must, and he replies. “We go into battle tomorrow. There is no better time.”
No better time.
I open my mouth and shut it on a mounting pressure to . . . to confess things, my heart hammering too hard for me to sort through them all. I cast my gaze away and admit something small, something he can take with him, without making promises I won’t be able to keep later.
We go to battle tomorrow . . . what if he . . .
I swallow and slide my fingers under his shirt to curl around his flutette.
He watches me, eyes dark in the silvery shadows of the tent; dark and patient.
I finger each hole of the flutette, my voice unsteady. “In Kastoria, when you wouldn’t wake up, I took this and played music into your mouth.”
His catches his breath and his chest stills. He holds my gaze steady.
I swallow. “I couldn’t bear you not waking up. It was the closest I could let myself come to . . . kissing you.”
He sighs and strokes the back of my head. “I wish you weren’t just telling me your confessions because you think I’ll die.”
“You can’t die.” I say it bluntly, over an enormous flare of panic in my chest.
“Caelus . . .” His whisper goes right through me, instantly carving through the panic to reach into the thickening heat and those low-slung shivers.
My fingers pinch at his flutette and my breathing is so hard I’m surprised music isn’t giving me away.
I shake my head.
“Caelus . . .”
His voice. It has that creamy softness to it, almost a plea. It’s exactly like the memory inside the dromveske of that night. The night he wanted to be real.
That bittersweet night I’ve visited too many times.
“I need to work on my self-restraint.” I shove myself away and land with a cold thump on the ground. Quin peers over the side of the cot with an amused smirk and a raised eyebrow. I jump to my feet and wag a finger. “You too, your majesty.”
I climb a hill inside the camp and try to cool myself on the night grass while staring at the sky. Only, I can’t escape it. That memory is too strong, too pulling.
I clutch blades of grass and slam my eyes shut, and sink into every detail again . . .
Quin has been knocked out. When he awakes, it is to find himself locked in his bedchamber, his magic sealed. Incense burns in all corners of the room, smoke swirling lazily in the air. He coughs on the thickness of it and snaps his cane in a hurry to put them out. He bangs on his door, shouts, but the men outside are under king’s orders—still he calls out, begging futilely until his voice is hoarse. Soon he’s slumped at the door, shallow breaths turning into pants. His face is flushed and his neck blooming red. He tears off each layer of clothing and staggers to a basin to splash his face. He murmurs to himself he must watch out for trickery, he cannot succumb to this, but his voice is slurred and he keeps squeezing his eyes shut, slapping his head.