Which she realized was actually her own body.
“—for this. ALL OF YOU!” she heard Draven bellow.
The room spun around her, and it was barely a second before she felt his arms picking her up and then his body behind hers. She groaned as she tried to bring herself out of whatever poisoned tonic they had given her.
“Draven…”
His arms squeezed around her from behind, and he kissed her cheek. “I’m here,” he whispered.
Her subconscious slipped, for how long she wasn’t sure. The next she woke, she was still cradled in his arms, and she could hear his soft snores behind her. She forced herself to turn around so that she could see his face.
The sight of it brought tears to her eyes.
His beautiful face, marred with a purple bruise and long scratch on his cheek from where he’d been hit with the pommel of the sword. His lip cut open, dried blood in his beard. She reached up to his cheek and pressed her lips softly against his.
He stirred, his hands gently pressing against her waist, and he kissed her back. When she opened her eyes, she was met with the glistening sage eyes she swore into memory. A slow tear trickled down his cheek, and she wiped it away.
She didn’t know the words to say. Sitting in his arms on their final night together… Condemned for the only true love she’d ever felt. Her death she did not care about. She knew this day would come. She had known since the night she kissed him at banquet in front of everyone.
She laid her head in the crook of his neck, and she felt the next tear hit her hair as he kissed her forehead.
“I watched them write the scroll,” she whispered. “He made me watch as he signed the order. The new law.”
“What law?” Draven asked.
“That love between the Venari and Promised daughter is now forbidden,” she answered solemnly. “Punishment for the discovery of such a bond would be punishable by death on both parties, for if allowed to flower, an abominated creature would grow in her womb, and the safety of Haerland would be in danger. By order of the King and Bedrani Council.”
His hand tightened around her. “Abominated creature,” he muttered distractedly under his breath. “Our child is not—”
“You’ll be tortured in the morning,” she cut him off. “And then the people…” Her words stuck in her throat, and he squeezed her arms. “The people will be allowed stone’s throws. At sunset… what’s left of me will burn. They plan to hang you with the rising sun the next morning.” She looked up at him through her strangles of hair.
“Do you still want to run?” he asked.
She swallowed hard, a tear running down her cheek. “We can’t,” she managed. “To run now would bring war and terror to all of our lands. We would have to go to the caves, and my brother and the Council would send an army, burning and killing everything in his path to kill us. They would take the mountains, the forest, the reef… All our friends would perish beneath Rhaif’s thumb before the true war is upon us. I do not wish to live in fear my entire life, nor do I wish to bring such a war to Haerland when Man is already knocking on our beaches.” She paused and looked up at him. “You could run. After you are brought back here to the tower at nightfall. You could escape.”
He brought her hand to his lips and shook his head. “There is something I must do tomorrow night. After it is complete, I will meet you at the Edge on my own accord, in my way. I will not allow them the chance to see the light leave my eyes.”
Her heart shattered at the thought. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I do,” he insisted. “I wish to die with the noise of the Noctuans in my ears, the warmth of the darkness around me. Not in the sun with the people who have betrayed Haerland staring at me. They do not deserve the satisfaction.”
Aydra swallowed hard, unable to move her eyes from his. “I love you so much,” she managed.
A long sigh exhaled from his lungs, and he leaned his forehead against hers. “I love you.”
Her stomach lurched just moments later, and Aydra grimaced at the feeling of her insides evacuating onto the floor outside the bars. Draven rubbed her back and held her once more when she made her way back to the ground. Every now and then, he would rub her stomach, causing a chill to run down her spine, a swell of raw emotion to fill her core. And when he leaned down to kiss her belly, she couldn’t stop the silent tears rushing over her reddened cheeks.
“You know, we would have gotten to name it,” he whispered.
Aydra swallowed hard, biting back the sobs threatening her core. She’d hardly allowed herself to think about the child as he had, as what it would have actually been rather than a punishment from her own giver to end her life. But as her life seemed to be ending anyway, she laid her head against his chest, and she allowed herself to live inside the fantasy Draven spoke of.
“What would you have suggested?” she managed.
He kissed the inside of her palm, and then rested them together back on her stomach. “There is a name for the Venari in the old language… one that means ‘Hunter of the Sun’… Theron.”
“Theron… sounds too formal,” she told him.
He huffed amusedly under his breath. “What do you suggest?”
“The name would have to be grand, but not audacious or conceited. A child born of us would know no fear, it would live in shadows and become one with our darkness. Shrouded in the blanket of it. It would ride the dragons. Swim with the serpents. A child
