“Are you serious right now?” The veins in his throat bulge, his nostrils flaring the same way they did when we were children and I’d beat him at a game of skip rocks. “What could you have possibly been thinking coming out here on your own?”
“I’m always on my own! Today was nothing different.”
A humorless laugh cuts from his mouth. “Great. That’s just great. Just a normal day in Gravenburg for you, narrowly escaping your own demise.”
My jaw clamps shut. Not because I want to protect his fragile ego from my lashing tongue, but because he enrages me beyond my ability to form rational sentences—as he so often does.
I just want to scream at him sometimes. But I want to hug him too. It’s never anything but complicated when he’s around.
Dragging a hand through the braids that he still wears, the ones he used to hate, he looks me over again. His eyes linger on my quivering hands, on the ragged rise and fall of my chest that I can’t seem to soothe no matter how much I’m trying to appear unscathed.
He sighs, the anger that had carved dark grooves out of his forehead softening. “Char, are you—”
“I’m fine,” I say swiftly, but the edge in my tone is gone, replaced by the other emotions catching up with me.
If he hadn’t come, I’d be dead. I should be dead, by all rights. I just spent the last couple hours wandering aimlessly in a ghoul-ridden town alongside two noctis, one of whom suspected I was a fraud from the beginning. No one survives this long by making reckless choices like that.
My head shakes in small, rapid movements, and I utter the very thing I would’ve rather not said. “I would’ve died if you hadn’t found me…”
The statement is too true. Too vulnerable. Too intimate.
His hand finds mine in an instant, like he’s been waiting for that confession all our lives. Perhaps because he has. It’s not just a confession of the truth. There’s so much more behind those words. I’ve just admitted to weakness, to needing him more than I’ve ever led on to believe.
Under normal circumstances, such a notion would’ve never left my lips, no matter how much it was true. But perhaps because I’m still too shellshocked to move, much less think, I don’t flinch away from his warmth. He wraps me up in his embrace and I lean into the gentle, almost timid caress of his stroking fingers along my spine. Today has left me raw and shattered, and all I want is for him to hold me together before the pieces burst apart.
“Come here,” he says into my ear. “Of course, I came for you, you fool. I’ll always come for you.”
I laugh. Something I hadn’t expected to be able to do just yet. And in so doing, my frayed pieces begin smoothing back together.
At least for a fleeting moment.
A memory of the last time he held me like this awakens in my mind. It was only a few short days ago as we laid in my bed, arms and legs entwined and he counted the freckles along the curve of my hip. He declared the constellation there as the most beautiful among all the stars, which was saying a lot for someone who used to watch them every night when he was a boy.
But the comfort and affection he’d hoped to give me that night had the opposite effect. It had reminded me of how foolish we were being. How reckless with our own hearts.
In this world, there’s no room for love. Only death.
Spice cake has no business in this shithole of a town. Neither does anything as intimate as him caressing my back. He is a distraction, and a damned fine one at that. But I think I’ve had enough distractions for the day.
“You’re alright. You’re safe now,” he says, making the same mistake they all do.
Safety is a lie. One that I’ve never been able to believe. Not since I was a little girl. Not since Hulbeck. What I learned that day is that for as long as there are noctis, no human will ever be safe.
It’s then that I finally step out of his embrace. I do so slowly though, perhaps because he just saved my life and I don’t want to stir up any more emotions today for either of us.
“Thanks for coming,” I say with a faint smile, avoiding eye contact. “Sorry that I had to lead two hungry noctis to your front gates. I had good reasons.”
He answers with a snort. “That’s what I told the sentries, and believe me, I can’t wait to hear them.” Tapping the blunt end of his spear on the ground, his gaze drifts down to the dead noctis at our feet. “You know, for someone who still can’t fight without a crossbow, you’d think you would’ve picked a fight with someone you’d be better-matched against.”
“And you’d think for someone who just scored himself two fresh noctis corpses, you’d be a little more grateful.”
His expression turns dubious. “You didn’t bring them all this way just for my research. So spit it out. Why are you here? Why did you bring them to me?”
Night approaches. Soon these streets will be black, and our human eyes won’t be able to discern a single thing. It’s too much to say out here in the open.
“Don’t just make a girl stand out in the cold rain,” I whine, my shivering limbs making it difficult to sound anything but pathetic. “Let’s head back and I’ll tell you everything these guys let slip about the next Hunt.”
5
