Yet he keeps coming, crowding me back until I’ve retreated all the way across the kitchen. His voice is calm; his expression is anything but. “Do you think you can hide from me?”
I do not answer.
The air between us grows denser as it compresses to an arm’s length. Charged, like the sky before a storm. Every particle of it seems to sizzle in my lungs.
A messy lock of hair falls into his face. He does not pause to push it away. “Do you think your guilt is thick enough to obscure the things you want?”
“Guilt?” My back hits the wall, halting my retreat. “I don’t feel any guilt.”
“Again, with the lies.”
My teeth clench. “You’re being an ass tonight.”
“Just tonight?” His smirk is dark. Dangerous. He takes another step—a final step—and my heart stumbles a beat.
I clear my throat nervously. “I don’t know what’s come over you, but—”
“Perhaps I’m tired of this game.”
“I’m not playing any games.”
His body stops just short of mine, so close we are very nearly touching. My head tips back to keep him in view. His eyes at such proximity are impossible to escape, the blue piercing straight through me, the dark lashes fringing them thick enough to make any kohl-clutching courtesan jealous.
I press my spine so hard against the wall, I’m certain it will bruise. I do not dare breathe. I fear if I do, the slightest expansion of my lungs will cause our chests to brush.
“If you’re trying to intimidate me,” I hiss, “it’s not working. You can be the pushiest prick in the realm, I’ll not cower before you like some wilting flower.”
His lips twitch briefly with amusement, but soon twist into the cruelest of smiles, his humor vanishing so quickly it gives me whiplash. “Pushy I may be, but at least I’m honest. Can you say the same?”
My lips part, but he cuts me off before a single retort escapes.
“You want to be here. Whether you can admit it or not…I canfeelit. Today, when we channeled…That high, that rush…You’ve never felt anything like that before. And I didn’t need the godsdamned bond to tell me that.” His face swoops down so it is aligned with mine. His cheekbones are sharp as blades; his words somehow sharper, though they come out in a whisper. “I know because I’ve never felt anything like that before, either. Not in my exceedingly long lifetime.”
My lungs seize, incapable of function.
“Even now, beneath your annoyance, I can still feel traces of it,” Soren continues. “Your mind moving with mine. Your heart pounding in perfect sync.” His voice, always so melodic, turns serrated. “Connected.One. You felt it, too. I know you did.”
“I didn’t feel it.” A friable declaration.
He grins darkly. He knows I’m lying. He does not call me out on it. Instead, his hands come up—one bracing on the wall behind me, the other collaring my neck. I suck in a startled gasp as his strong fingers wrap like a featherlight noose. He can no doubt feel my pulse racing under his fingertips. But then, he does not need to feel it.
Not when he is inside my head.
I tell myself to pull away, but I am oddly paralyzed in place—by his body, by his touch. By his words most of all.
“You are a bird that’s been kept in captivity for far too long, skylark.” His mouth is so close, I can feel his breath on my lips, sweet with berries and wine. “It’s time you try out the open skies for a change. If you go back to Caeldera, you go back to your cage.”
“And you’d rather keep me here? Another bird in your aviary?” I croak. “That’s just swapping one set of bars for another.”
His jaw tenses with uncharacteristic tightness, a fissure of pure frustration. He quickly smooths it away. “Is it easier to paint me the villain in your story than to admit I might be right?”
“But you aren’t right.”
“No?”
“You don’t know anything about me or my life.”
“I know a great deal more about you and your miserable life than you can imagine.” His eyes glitter ominously. His fingertips glide against my throat, a lethal caress. “I know you spend your days toiling at the sickbeds of strangers. I know you spend yournights locked away, alone, in the apartments of a dead apothecary. I know you rarely eat, rarely rest, rarely speak, and never smile. I know your friends have fled to every corner of the Dyvedi plateau, and the few who remain in the city are none too eager to pass hours in your company. I know you are deeply lonely, little wind weaver. And that loneliness has cut you to the bone, chiseled away your wild, reckless spirit into a melancholy skeleton.”