I flinch. “Your precious control.”
“My city,” he corrects, jaw tight as a vise. “My people.”
I cannot fault him for that. I cannot even be surprised by it. For he has sung this refrain before, has made his position on this—us—more than apparent.
Emotions are a liability.
The things we want most in this world, the things that make us feel the most intensely…those are the things we cannot have.
Perhaps it is selfish of me to push the issue. Perhaps it is futile to ask him for things he cannot give me. Perhaps it is shortsighted to long so hopelessly for an ephemeral fix to an everlasting problem. But I cannot care about that. Not with him standing an arm’s length away. Not with his eyes searing into mine. Not with the bond a live current of power and pining.
The emotions between us are a jumble—love, hate, regret, resentment. I cannot begin to sort out which belong to me and which stem from him.
A single tear streaks down my cheek. “You are many things, Pendefyre, but I never thought you were a coward.”
Jerking my gaze from his, I turn my back to him and wrap my arms around my middle, as if to contain the relentless grief. My watering eyes fix on the salamanders basking by the viridescent pool. They blink back at me, translucent eyelids moving horizontally across angular pupils, turning their vibrant eyes opaque. As I watch, several of them scurry out of sight, retreating to burrows in the pitted rocks or slipping under the viscous surface of the pools. The sun has retreated as well, a dense bank of clouds swiftly casting the entirety of Blister Bight in heavy shadow. The hot, sulfuric air is suddenly thick with impending rain.
“Take me back,” I say, my voice flat.
Nothome. Just as Penn said, Caeldera is his home—his kingdom—not mine.
Two arms slide around me without warning. I do not resist as I am pulled back against a warm, strong chest. The bandolier of blades presses tight to my spine through my thin novitiate uniform. And though I try my damnedest not to listen, to shore up my heart with anger, a levee within me breaks wide open anyway as soon as I feel the brush of his lips against my lobe, as soon as I hear his deep, rasping voice in my ear.
“Skies, Rhya, if I could, I would lose myself in you. Utterly.But in doing so, I would lose my grip on everything that allows me to wake up each day and walk the ruined streets of my city without cowering. I would lose my determination to set things to rights.”
His lips skim the column of my throat, where my pulse pounds double time. His tone pitches even lower. “If I bury myself in you…” I shiver against him, powerless to stop the heat that furls through me. “I will never come up for air.”
“So it must be all or nothing?” I whisper bleakly. “We must either be everything to each other or nothing at all?”
A low, tortured groan rattles in his throat. “Yes.Gods help me, yes. That’s how it has to be.”
“For how long?” I ask. “Forever?”
“Do not ask me that.”
His clear devastation stirs mine. I feel it in the bond as plainly as I hear it in his voice.
“Infernal hells! I can’t be—” He breaks off, control slipping. His fingertips dig into my skin. “I don’t want—”
“You don’t want what?”
He spins me around in his arms, the movement so fast I see stars. His expression is at war with itself, a plain divide of self-castigation and unflagging need. I cannot predict which will win out. Not until he mutters, “Forever can start tomorrow.”
Then he yanks me fully against him, one arm a steely band around my waist, the other delving deep into the thick coils of hair at my nape. Before I can make a sound, his lips come down on mine.
Penn’s mouth is hard. Unyielding. Almost angry. He kisses me like a punishment—whether for me or for himself, I’m not sure. Perhaps it is for both of us. Me for driving him to this state, him for caving to it.
For this is an unacceptable lapse of his rigid self-restraint, anabhorrent deviation from his plans to hold me at bay. A tiptoe into a forbidden pool of lust we’ve only just sworn never to submerse ourselves in.
And, gods help us, that makes it all the more glorious.
His lips set me aflame, fan the swirling ache inside me to a blaze that soon becomes a wildfire. Every kiss I’ve ever had before Pendefyre’s pales in comparison. Not that I’ve had many. Tomas, the baker’s apprentice back in Seahaven, was sweet. Kind. Slow, drugging kisses on summer nights, a flurry of buckles and bodice laces, quiet reassurances in the aftermath. His boyish love was a secret whispered into my skin.
Penn’s touch is no murmured sweet nothing. No whisper. It is a scream. A shriek. A desperate heat that sinks into my bones. His fingers sear trails of fire across my skin. His mouth bruises. Passion ripples through me like supercharged air over a steaming kettle. I think I might begin to breathe pure flame like one of the fymandridae as our tongues and teeth dance together; as our heads slant this way and that, warring even as we yield.
My whole body trembles with yearning. I press myself flush against him, wind my arms around his neck, skim my shaking fingers along the sharp slant of his jaw. Craving a closeness that is not mine to claim. Pressing hard against his chest, as if physical proximity might somehow also permit me into the chambers of the heart beating within.
And yet, even in this moment, when I would happily throw all caution to the wind in favor of the less logical emotions thrumming through my body…When I would cast aside all my restraint, strip off any inhibitions along with my clothing…