19

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This Quiet brings a tension to my insides. Feels like a metal hand has me in its unyielding grip, and I can't quite breathe enough to soothe the tightness of my lungs.

Tomorrow, the Sacrament really begins. The first passage will come, and though I won't be in it myself, since my bargain with Daxeel protects me, I'm ill at ease.

It's a fear for him that has me rigid in my own skin.

There is no doubt that survives in me that he is nothing less than a fierce warrior. But it's only him and his brother who are both from the ancient bloodlines and competing this Sacrament—and the litalves will be faced with one ultimate task. Take Daxeel and Caius out. Kill them before they reach the second passage.

And it is all I can think about as I steep myself in the hot bubbled water in the washroom. It haunts my mind as I scrub myself raw, chases my thoughts as I dress in a bodiced chemise.

I'm so consumed by my fears that, when I perch on a stool, I barely react to the sight of my bruised reflection in a mirror.

I don't even think of Taroh as I dab soothing lotion on the bruises and cuts he marked me with, I only think of Daxeel in the first passage. I fear that he might die.

I leave behind the lotions and balms that belong to Comlar, and head back to my bedchamber.

The Quiet of the garrison is haunting in itself. All the contenders will be at rest now. No more bustling corridors or bloody battle blocks or loud shouts in the Hall.

The corridors feel dead as a carcass in the woods. I have that tingly sensation as I make my way back to my bedchamber, the tickle of a thousand invisible spiders crawling all over me.

Against the pressing nature of the dark, my skin prickles and I fight a shudder that tenses my shoulders. The cool bite of the floorboards nips at the soles of my feet.

I keep my steps swift, but when I turn the corner for my corridor, my hands fist at my sides—

And I still.

Down some doorways, a tall and broad-shouldered male is shrouded in the thick shadows. He leans against my door, arms folded over his strong chest—and even through the dark I can see he's cut from muscle.

Through the shadows, Daxeel's cobalt eyes lift and lock onto me. The stare hits me like lead.

I haven't spoken to him since last Quiet. I snuck out in the Warmth, and I wonder if he's relieved about that or on the verge of biting into me.

But there's no sign of rage in the way he watches me from the shadows. There's a distant softness in his eyes, and in the way he pushes from the door, slow and lazy.

For a beat, I'm whirled back in time to those nights he was careful around me, so careful not to spook me. Then I blink and I'm here again, in the corridor, facing such a different version of my love.

In his black sweater, combat trousers, and black boots, he even looks different to how he did back then, only ever in his leathers. The lashes of glistening ink that lick up the side of his neck, the lines that cut down his hand to the tips of his fingers, that's new too.

But I find this Daxeel grows on me with each moment I spend with him. I might even like his savage side at times.

But he's not so savage this Quiet.

He lifts his hand for me; come here.

I do.

My chemise catches between my freshly lotioned legs as I close the distance between us. His stare never wavers as I advance, and his hand doesn't lower.

I almost rest my palm on his, reach for him, but he stops me. He changes course. With a pushed step forward, he moves for me, and his fingertips come up to my cheek. There, he ghosts his touch over the purple bruise shining on my cheekbone.

A frown knits his brow.

As he studies the faint edges of the bruise, his head tilts to the side, and his jaw clenches tight enough that his teeth might shatter.

Then his eyes drop, and I feel the weight of them land on my mouth. A slight swell of my lip, a healed cut, scabbed and sore, that he shifts his focus to.

The balms have made good work on my wounds.

But Daxeel's frown digs deeper into his brow as he rubs the pad of his thumb over the cut, like he wants nothing more than to wipe it away.

Not once does he ask what happened.

So I know, "You talked to Rune." My voice is soft in the dark.

He drops his hand to my wrist, and his fingers coil tight. His grip is firm, commanding, and so is his gaze that he pins me with.

That look alone has me melting.

I'm a puppet now and he holds my strings.

He says nothing as he reaches back for the door. He leads me into the bedchamber, its dusty light from the few glowjars still scattered around. I tuck most of them away in the wardrobe during the Quiet, but some are still littered around the room, like my discarded stockings and the lingerie I threw aside some phases ago and never picked up.

Never thought I would miss Knife.

As though they are weapons on a battlefield, Daxeel moves around my litter of clothes and boots and sandals and books. He guides me to the bed and, with his hand slipping to my middle, gently pushes me onto the mattress.

To say there's no lust in how he looks at me before he reaches back to the scruff of his sweater and tugs it off, would be a lie. There's always lust in the way he watches me.

But this Quiet feels different.

He's not here for sex.

He doesn't need to tell me that. I know it, I feel it. Maybe that's the bond we share now, a sense of intentions I'm picking up on like it's a faint echo of something I feel. I don't know exactly.

But I trust it. And I scoot onto the farther side of the bed, then rest my cheek on the pillow.

I watch as he strips down to nothing—and I give the evidence of his lust a lingering look before he lifts the furs and climbs in beside me.

He drapes his arm over my middle like a weight to keep me in place.

I shimmy closer and nuzzle into his solid chest. "Don't say anything," I mumble against his bronzed marble chest, my lips moving over the inky lines that spear across his flesh. "Just let me speak."

His answer is silence, but his head lowers to press his lips to my hair, and I feel cocooned again.

"I love you," I whisper. "I know you love me too, but you won't say it back. Just…" I loosen the bundle of nerves in my throat with a sigh. "No matter what happens between us, now or in the future, together or apart… I pray with everything I have to all the gods that you survive the Sacrament."

Arching my neck, I do the best I can to look up at him. At this angle, I can only see the deep indent of his dimple, the shadowed clench of his jaw.

"I would beg you not to participate if I had even a speck of hope that you'd listen to me. You won't. But please—please don't die."

It's arrogance that tenses his muscles against me. His voice is a growl, and he answers in the most dark male way, "I will not die."

Flattening my hands on his pecs, I push against him. But of course he's as solid as a damn statue and I only end up pushing myself across the sheets. He doesn't budge an inch.

"Would you have told me then?" I ask.

His answer is a frown. His gaze cuts to the contoured bruise on my cheekbone for a beat.

"That you love me," I explain, and my voice is low, soft, as though if I speak loud enough then I'm only shaming myself. "If I'd said it back then, would you have said it to me?"

It's not really in his nature or his culture.

The kiss was a declaration of love, each kiss is an I love you now and eternally, but in my culture we speak the words.

He sighs the answer with an edge of defeat, "I planned on it."

Slowly, I slide my hands down his chest. A caress of sorts, a lure for him to tell me more.

He does.

"The night I set the trap for you, of baubles and sweets," he says, and it's not lost on me that he calls it a trap, not a trail, and I smile something small, "was the night I planned on confessions."

Confessions.

It takes me a pause to realize what he meant to tell me back then. More than love, he was going to tell me about evate.

But I can't let on that I know about our evate connection yet, it won't serve me. He finds comfort in my ignorance, because I'm winning, he's losing, and if he keeps this one thing secret from me, this one piece of knowledge that he can hold over me, then that soothes him.

"My time in your land was at an end, and Eamon warned me of your father." His eyes darken. "I knew he would never allow a marriage between us. But I was determined to steal you. Not even your father was going to stand in my way."

Beneath the furs, I shift my feet closer to him until they touch his shins, and I'm soothed by the contact.

"So I meant to propose," he sighs the words with the same defeat that softens his eyes. "I meant to reveal my hand—and take you."

The admission strikes me like a sword in the gut.

I blink at him, it's all I can manage. On the third blink, an itch prickles at my eyes. I feel the tear slide down my temple and into my hair.

"You were going to propose?"

"Yes. But your father stole you from me," and there's the growl I recognize all too well in him as his eyes smoulder, "I came to your window, I threw stones each night, but as you said—you ignored me. Then I came to you again at the court, and you slighted me. You shamed me," and his lips curl to bare his teeth, "mocked me."

The tears streak freely down my face to gather on my pillow. "My father—"

He cuts me off with a growl. "You chose what you chose. If you had come to me, told me at the court what you faced, I would have taken you then, and your life would have been different. We would be different. You would have the animals in the garden, the scripture in your own private library, the husband who loves you." His lashes lower on me. "You chose what you chose—and you can do nothing but blame others for it."

I swallow back a thickness in my throat. "That's not fair. You never said anything to me about a future, about marriage or, at the very least, your protection. So you expected that I would risk my father's punishments all in the hope that you would save me?"

Those deep blue eyes run me over like I'm a dead rodent on the side of a path. "How awful his lectures must be on you. To not be the precious favourite, the darling pampered with dresses and sweets and whatever whim she desires in the moment. Did he take away your pretty baubles?"

The mockery strikes me cold.

And now, I see myself through his eyes.

A silly, spoilt halfling.

You want to be the only one… the darling.

Before my face can twist with the fresh wave of sobs, I roll onto my back. It doesn't fully hide me from his eternal stare, but I find more comfort in it.

Still, I fight the ache in my chest, the twist of my heart. "And so that's what you see when you look at me."

Leaning closer, the heat of his mouth brushes along the shell of my ear. "What else is there?"

Weak.

Weakling.

Those are the words echoing in my mind at his soft, loving viciousness. I need him to want me. I need him to love me again.

But I doubt now more than ever that I'm strong enough for this war between us. No matter how far I've come, the battles I've won, the end of the war seems so far away—and I am tired.

I speak through the thickness of tears, "Show me what it would be if that night never happened, if it was the way it was always meant to be."

His frown presses against my temple. An unspoken question.

"Show me what our first time would have been like when you loved me still."

I turn to face him. The tips of our noses touch and our gazes hook. He spares my tears no glances.

I lean in—and kiss him.

The flutter of his lashes disturbs my own.

Then I speak against his perfect lips, "I want you to pretend."

Daxeel does just that.