Her thread connected with Pax’s when he saved her life from the lizards, him needing to protect – her feeling desperate to do the same in return. Out of my control. Too late.
Not Seth yet. He’s as clamped down as I am for his very own reasons – but that heart thread is there. Hurting her is not an option. Pax, for all his dangers, is actually the safest one of us to mate with. The most controlled.
Her mortal soul was being bled dry, but her Silvari soul is growing before my eyes. Her body is ever so slowly filling with the colors that mortals miss out on.
Damn, it’s powerful. But she is not. Gentle and playful – suited to Seth. Wise and attentive – suited to Roarke. Commanding and stubborn – suited to Pax.
And just a hint of what she has that begs to me.
One hint. One kiss. One moment of falling into the Darkness.
I want to let her in, but only when I know she understands what connecting with someone like me means. Only after I know she’ll survive. That she can meet me as an equal. That she is willing to break me in return.
Which may be never.
“It’s going to hurt,” I rumble, filling the silence between us. “Don’t run from the pain. That doesn’t make it any easier.”
“No, fighting it does,” she says, sassiness lacing her voice but hiding none of the fear she’s feeling.
Just fear – because that other thread didn’t connect. Because I stopped it.
I struggle to keep my hands off of her. Locking one around my sword hilt – the other in a fist.
She needs a warrior right now – and a warrior is what I’m good at.
“Fighting against it is instinct. Pain loses its power when we stop fighting against it or with it or because of it. Fight despite of it.”
I want to say the words again and again.
Don’t fight the pain. Don’t fight for it. Don’t fight because of it.
Only fight despite it. No matter what.
“Pain loses its power when we do what we have to, even though it is there,” she says, her eyes glazed as she translates my words into her own.
I offer her a sharp nod, savoring the last sweet tease of honey on the back of my throat.
“You know what the true power of my Seed is?” I ask, and wait just a moment for her silence before answering. “If a person turns their face to the sun, the shadows will fall behind them.”
“That’s what Cook used to say about forgetting about my worries,” she says.
“My gift is that I thrive with my face to the Shadows, so those behind me can see the sun. The Darkness, the Shadows, they aren’t my enemy. My love, remember when you promised you would keep your promises?”
After a beat she nods. “Around the campfire – was I naked?”
Shadow. Focus.
“Promise you’ll return,” I growl. “If we don’t find you, and he’s out cold, drag his ass back to the White Castle. Promise me.”
“Why? Why don’t we just go now?”
“He won’t risk you there. Not after this. He won’t risk you stepping foot back in Silva – even if it kills him – until he knows he can keep you safe.”
“Soot-servant,” she says, tapping herself on the chest. “Make promise – keep promise.”
Those words feel like she first spoke them a million years ago.
And like it might be a million more before I hear her speak again.
I hook my finger under her chin.
“Saber,” I correct her, losing my battle not to press my lips into hers.
Just a kiss.
One touch of my cold skin to hers, then away again.
I want to wrap my arms around her, to feel her strong against me, to have her locked in my grasp, but I keep my hands to myself.
Break, that is what she would do.
That first kiss was all the result of the Power Blocker because she doesn’t like pain. So we’d both regret it later. I can’t hurt her.
I just want to protect her.
Try telling everything other than my mind that. My lips scream more, and my pants have all kinds of problems.
Thank fuck she’s badly injured. I can respect badly injured. A little injured and I might be thinking differently.
I straighten, my finger still hooked under her chin, and watch the little shadow slide down my arm, brush against her cheek, then retreat.
She spots him instantly. The bubble’s gone, and she’s still attuned to my power, which unfurls misguided blue hope in my chest. Ocean colors, swirls of turquoise and sapphire. Both beautiful and dangerous.
“Have you named him yet?” she asks.
“Fleck,” I say, surprising the fuck out of myself.
“Why Fleck?” she asks.
“Because reflection was too long, and it reminds me of you.”
“Why?” she almost demands.
“Annoying as bralls,” I say, barely smothering a smile by pursing my lips.
I reach into my pocket and pluck out the small glass bracelet kept safe since the moment she called me her husband in the markets. It has five fine bands of color through it. Pax in green, Roarke in purple, Seth in burnt orange, Thane in golden yellow, and me in red. I may have claimed it then, but it seemed pointless at the time. The darts and the blades had a purpose, and it was none of my business to be giving her a trinket.
She spots it and makes a little awed noise, kind of like a sigh. “It’s beautiful.”
I take her hand and press the piece into her palm, saying, “Glass is your weapon.”
She chuckles and slips the bracelet on the opposite arm to her other glass. I lift the armor to inspect it. The surface is smooth and solid and looks impossible to remove.
“It hums,” she says. “Almost like a sound too real, too alive, to be considered a sound.”
Like an extra sense that no one else has, so there’s been no
