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My breath caught in my throat as he spoke the words and the last of the walls I had built silently shattered.

Tears streamed freely now as his thumb caressed my cheek and wiped them from my skin.

“Will you . . . will you hold me?” I whispered the question, and before it had a second to linger between us, his hands were dragging me into his chest. His arms wrapped around my body as his lips brushed against my ear.

“Sleep, Ataliia.”

Chapter twenty-two

HYACINTH

Landershadn’tcometobed last night. He’d left me standing in the war room with more questions than answers, and as I lay between the sheets and stared up at the ceiling I realized, for the first time, I was truly angry at him.

I didn’t expect to know every little thing about him, or for him to know every tiny detail about me, but the big things—I thought we had created a space between us where we could share the big things.

But I was wrong, and that knowledge hurt.

I groaned, pushing from bed and wrapping a blanket around my shoulders as I flicked my fingers toward the fireplace, waking the flames from their slumber. I strode over to the arched glass doors of our bedchamber that led out onto the terrace and looked into the night that was slowly slipping from the sky.

Dawn was close, and I needed to be ready to leave at first light. The whooshing of the tether sounded and I could sense hispresence before he materialized in the room, but I kept my eyes pinned to the glass.

“Hyacinth.” Landers’s voice rang softly throughout the room and I closed my eyes against the emotion it sent raging through my chest. “I am sorry.”

I let my eyes open, slowly turning to face him to find his gaze already on me, his features molded into a tortured expression.

“Where have you been?” I asked, the tone of my own voice matching the quiet of the room.

“At Asrai’s,” he answered, running a hand through his tousled hair. He looked . . .haunted. I’d never seen him so disheveled and unkempt.

I nodded, turning away from him as I let the blanket fall from my shoulders. “I need to get ready to leave,” I said, turning toward the bathroom.

“Hyacinth,please,” he begged, and I stilled at the fear that plagued his voice. “Please give me a chance to speak.”

My body snapped toward him, curls flying over my shoulder with the movement as my eyes caught his. “You’ve had hundreds of chances, for months, Landers. You had your chance last night. But instead, you left me standing in the war room,alone.”

He ran another nervous hand through his hair. “This is not something I know how to do.” His voice sounded erratic as he waved his hand between us. “I have never had a partner—not like this. Never let anyone get close enough to see the parts of me that I have shown you. I do not know how to let anyone in, but I am trying.”

He clutched the back of the arm chair, wrapping his fist around it like he was struggling with the urge to throw it across the room.

“But, I want you . . .I need you to see me. To know every part of me. I crave to be loved by you, Hyacinth, for the man that Iam, not the one I wish I could be.” Emotion cracked in his voice as the words fell from his lips like a plea for me.

His eyes met mine again with so much pain and fear shining there. He didn’t try to mask it, didn’t try to hide it from me like he always had.

Understanding flowed into my features as his words sunk in, the anger and resentment quieting as I looked up at him.

He had been afraid to tell me, and I’d been afraid to ask.

Both of our scars and fears had collided and neither of us had been willing to face the possibility of losing the other. The trauma of our pasts was a wicked thing, working like the devil to keep us trapped inside of it—to push us apart. I realized then, staring into his pain-steeped eyes, that the habits we had once learned to help us survive were now the only thing standing in the way of healing.

I let out a weighted breath as I took a step toward him.

“I don’t know how to do this either,” I whispered. “You deserve love, Landers. You are worthy of it no matter what voice in your head screams that you aren’t. And I deserve the truth, all of it. Without having to ask for it—to beg for it. All I want is to love you in a way that doesn’t make you want to run from yourself.”

I took another step closer, closing the distance between us as I reached up and slid my palm against his cheek.

“But I do know, if we don’t have truth, if we don’t havetrust—we have nothing. Love, no matter how great it is, is not enough.”

He placed his hand over mine as I said the words, and I could see something in him shift. As if a veil had been pulled away from his skin, baring raw flesh.