“I am really tired,Pandora.”
“Have you ever seen a God?” I whisper.
“No, I have not seen a God. They’ve been gone for a long time. But I might start hallucinating them if you won’t let me sleep.”
“How do you know they’re real then?”
“Because I do. Because I exist. Now go to sleep,” he whispers.
“I don’t think I can.” He groans. “What? You’re the one that forced me over here with you. I could be sitting over there by the fire. So if I keep you awake, it’s your own fault.”
“You need to sleep too.” He lifts the hand draping across the ground and aims it toward my face. “Maybe I can help you.”
I shrink back, only succeeding in pressing my head back to his chest. “I thought you didn’t have your magic.”
He chuckles. “Not like that.”
Instead of aiming for my chin, like he had the last time he put me to sleep his hand drifts up toward the top of my head. There’s something tentative about his motions as he buries his fingers in my hair. I’m still waiting for the pulse of magic to follow even though he’s already told me he’s exhausted his magic and isn’t intending to use it.
There’s no magic.
Only the tips of his nails lighting up a thousand nerve endings as he traces delicate circles across my scalp.
My panic ignites and I jerk away, the back of my head smashing into his chest again as a giggle spills out of me.
He freezes. “What?”
“What’re you doing?” I gasp.
“I’m trying—“
“You’repettingme,” I gasp with another half-delirious laugh.
He huffs out a low laugh. “Isn’t that what one does with their pets?”
“I’m not your pet,” I snap, jerking my head away from his chest. He grabs my shoulder and carves me back a few inches.
“Oh, calm down. You’re so skittish. It doesn’t mean anything. I’m just trying to help you relax.”
His fingers loosen around my shoulder and then graze over my collar bone apprehensively. “My mother used to do this for me when I was a kid and couldn’t sleep. Hasn’t anyone ever done this for you before?”
He traces up my neck, slowly like he’s waiting for me to tell him to stop.
I should tell him to stop.
My heart blazes in my chest yet my body turns to stone which seems to signal an answer to an unspoken question. Just not one I’ve made consciously.
I’ve never been touched like this. Or if I have its been so long I can no longer remember. I’ve hardly let anyone touch me at all with the violent force usually surging under my skin.
My entire point of consciousness zeros in on the fingers grazing my jaw, trailing my temple and across my forehead, tracing back down to the crown of my ear. Every place he touches follows a singeing ecstasy under my skin that flushes warm despite the chilled air. I feel like I’m falling, sinking, and floating all at the same time. I let out a long exhale and slowly, my body loosens and I sink further into the ground, relaxing more fully against the arm under my neck.
He laces his fingers through my hair in soothing repetitive motions, combing it out gently when he hits a snag. It’s tootender, toogentle…making my heart roll and drop in alarming ways.
He sucks in a deep inhale, shifting closer so that the back of my head is brushing his chest. It hits me that he’s probably cold himself, having literally given me his shirt and his cloak and left his own body bare to the elements.
He didn’t have to save me.
The enormity of what he’s done washes over me again, unearthing an uneasy sensation of guilt. He hasn’t slept in days in order to save me, has gladly given me his clothing, is delicately stroking my hair in order to help me relax, and yet all I do is fight him because…
