Fordham didn’t have to say anything for her to know that he agreed. Especially now, after tonight.
They returned to the mountain. Kerrigan realized she was still a little tipsy from the drinks. Waking up at dawn to run for miles didn’t sound tempting in the least. But she just enjoyed the lightness in her head as they headed back to their rooms. When they came to the place where their paths diverged, she stopped in anticipation. Not quite ready to say good-bye.
But Fordham gently took her hand. “I’ll walk you.”
Her heart thudded in her chest. He released her hand and they walked together, side by side, tension brimming between them. She had felt desire and obsession but nothing like this. Nothing where her entire insides squirmed and shivered at the mere touch. Suddenly, her mouth was dry. She had no words for how she felt in that moment.
When they reached her door, she expected him to release her and go. But he hovered there before her, and for a moment, she was too frightened of what she would find when she looked up. For all her bluster about not being afraid, about controlling her fear, deep down, she had never been more afraid. She could master herself in life-or-death situations because she had to. But this?
“Kerrigan,” he said.
Her body shivered at the use of her name. All this time, he’d never really called her by her name. And now, to hear it from him in this moment, her body turned to mush.
“Look at me,” he commanded in the soft, urgent voice of his.
Slowly, she pushed down all her trembling fears and met his gray eyes. They were the same eyes she had been looking into for weeks. The same face that she had wanted to see smile—really smile—so she had brought him for a poetry reading. The man with a dozen layers and a million secrets. She had no hope of unraveling them all, but somehow, she was pulling them back inch by inch. And he was doing the same. Despite her fear—or maybe because of it—she realized just how much she wanted this.
“Who are you?” he asked softly.
“Who… who am I?” she asked with concern.
“You are nothing like I expected.”
“Nor are you, princeling,” she said with a smirk.
He brushed a lock of her red curls out of her face and his finger ran along her jaw. She didn’t breathe for the length of that touch. She wanted to move into it, but they were on a precipice. As if at any moment they could plunge forward into oblivion or be wrenched backward. And she didn’t want to be the thing that scared him off.
“I mean it. I was raised to believe that humans and half-Fae were different than full-blooded Fae. No, not just different… they were an abomination. Lower functioning and barely capable of more than servitude. Fae were silenced for even questioning those basic teachings. So, when you were sent to me that first day, I assumed the Society was trying to slight me for bending their rules and finding a loophole.”
“But they weren’t,” she whispered.
“No, I see now that they actually sent their best.”
She laughed shyly. “I wouldn’t say their best.”
“You are the first human or half-Fae I have ever been allowed more than a passing interest in. And everything I was taught was wrong,” he told her plainly.
She swallowed, taken in by his confession. She had known that the House of Shadows had these beliefs, but hearing them told such made her heart ache. The lies that were spread about her people. It was heartbreaking.
But Fordham’s realization was more than moving. It showed that people could change. They had the ability to see others as three-dimensional. And after he saw her as a real person and not lesser, he couldn’t unsee it. His world tilted on its axis and now, he had to look at the world through a new lens of empathy.
That was what she had seen from him over the last couple of weeks. Not a softening expressly to her, but a softening of his hardened core beliefs. And she fell for him even more in that moment.
“I’m glad that you came around. It couldn’t have been easy.”
“No,” he said, stepping forward.
She stilled under that gaze. His head dipped lower toward her. She wanted this. She wanted more from him. Her eyes fluttered closed of their own accord, and she hung in mid-air heavy with anticipation. His breath fell against her lips, hot and tantalizing. She could practically taste his lips.
But then he withdrew, leaving her hanging suspended.
She opened her eyes in surprise and a little more than embarrassed. Red tinged her freckled cheeks.
“Thank you for this evening,” he said formally, withdrawing a step.
“Oh… you’re welcome.”
“No one has ever done anything like that for me before, and I won’t soon forget it.”
She wanted to say so much more. She wanted to be bold enough to take that kiss for herself. But she saw something in his moody gray eyes that stilled her. It wasn’t fear, but it was taut with tension.
He wasn’t ready. For some reason, he still wasn’t ready to make that step. He had changed his views of half-Fae enough for her, but even still, he couldn’t move past that… couldn’t give her the kiss that she so desired. This was still to new. Too anathema to his upbringing.
So, she stepped backward, hid her plain desire from her face, and nodded. “I’m glad that you enjoyed it.”
“I should bid you good night.”
She saw the resolution in his eyes, the set of his jaw. The night was over.
“Good night,” she muttered wistfully and then reached for the handle.
The door fell open behind her, and she stepped inside, staring into Fordham’s gray eyes all the while. A crinkle sounded beneath her feet at the first step. Her brow furrowed in confusion, and
