Page 82

“I’ve wanted you like this from the beginning,” he tells her, his deep voice scraping across her throat to her ear.

He drives into her over and over, cradling her body, filling all the spaces of her perfectly. And she moves with him, swallowing his groans of pleasure, relishing in the feel of her breasts against his chest, and wondering how they’ll ever stop now that they’ve started. When the pace becomes frenetic, he holds her hips and leverages her higher to increase her pleasure. When she climaxes, it is long and shattering. His mouth cuts a trail down her chest, and upon his own release, he muffles the sound into her skin, the vibrations finding the place where her heart pounds.

They remain tangled together against the wall for a long time, trading breath. And while neither speaks, they share the knowledge that something intangible exists between them, pulling one where the other leads. It will no longer be ignored.

CHAPTERTHIRTY-SIX

The sagging pine cabin they have invaded was a welcome coincidence. Ryon saw its pine-needle roof from the sky only because he’d been searching so desperately for somewhere, anywhere, to land.

He had grown within worse hovels in the Colony, and Dawsyn had not been raised in a palace, so neither remarks on the molding walls, the holes in the floor to the earth below, the scatter of insects they disturb. Dawsyn deftly unclogs the narrow chimney and lights a fire in the old brick hearth, and they sleep, wrapped around one another, alongside the flames, their clothes now blankets atop them.

As she sleeps, he runs his fingers along the lengths of her black hair, following its wave with his eyes, watching where it catches the glow of firelight. She is – and he has known it since he first saw her – painfully beautiful. He imagines that if he were to tell her so, she’d frown, ask him what use beauty is, and neglect to thank him.

But she is. And he has found it hard to look away.

Ryon wonders if his own father struggled the same way when he was with Farra. Did the wrongness feel sharp in his mind, pricking him with unease each time he thought of the ocean of difference between them? Will Ryon always feel as equally wrong as he feels right when he is with her? Like he is coveting her, stealing her from the world?

Daylight breaks before he can settle into sleep, and when she stirs, he already begins to feel the loss of her, of when she will rise and leave her place against his chest. So, instead, he kisses her until she claws him with lust, and he sinks inside her once more, determined to hear his name on her lips before he can let her go.

Eventually, he must, but he is at the very least rewarded with the great pleasure of seeing her bare as she stands and walks around the tiny room, the morning light creeping through the cracks in the walls, creating shapes on her skin – skin marked with fights, with labor. Her black hair is long and tangled; her eyes hold a frightening edge. Stronger men than he could be quelled by that look alone. Of course she would be the exact one sent by the gods to torture him.

And so she does. All damned day.

The guards of the palace will be searching for them. They will try to kill them on sight – of that, he has no doubt. They have little choice but to do what they have been doing from the beginning and hide themselves away.

They forage, and Dawsyn is the first to find mint leaves, ripe berries, even some root vegetables beneath the earth, which she proclaims to be edible enough when roasted. They find water in a shallow stream close by and drink from it.

Dawsyn finds a blunt, broad ax head wedged into a stump beside the cabin, and Ryon watches, absorbed, as she chips around it with stones until the wood gives way and she can free the iron blade. Under tree cover, Ryon keeps watch as she selects the right stones for the job, sliding the ax head from toe to heel at an angle, sharpening the blade painstakingly. She hums as she does so, falling back into patterns that must have kept her company on the Ledge, working alone each day. When she is satisfied with the sinister way it glints in the sunlight, she uses it to cut down a low pine branch, hacking at the joining until it breaks off. She strips the outer bark until only the smoother grain beneath remains, and then she takes the stone and sands it down.

“Why do you stare?” Dawsyn asks after a time.

He grins. “I enjoy watching your hands work.”

“Maybe you could trouble yourself to use yours.” She raises her eyebrows at him. “Come here.”

He goes to her all too willingly, thinking of all the things he could do with his hands. She passes him the stone as well as the crude ax handle she fashioned. She places her hands on top of his and shows him how to move one against the other.

He steals a kiss when she gets too close, and she warns him away, promising death if he grows too distracted and ruins her work. And he wonders if maybe this isn’t his ideal life – trailing her obnoxiously, baiting her to his desire, drawing the smart from her mouth, and pretending that nothing else exists but them.

She sits with long strips of soft bark in her lap and weaves them, one end tied to the toe of her boot for leverage. She takes the ax handle from him when she is done and lodges the iron beard of the ax into the slit she has cut, binding it tight with her makeshift rope.

“It won’t last long,” she murmurs, lightly swinging it back into the tree stump and lifting it out again. “But it should hold long enough to cut some wood.”

He takes the ax from her and gets to work, cutting down the nearest tree, which only stands as tall as he does. Together, they strip the branches away and chop what can be used to burn.

Hours later, the fire is driving the dank smell of the cabin away and filling it with the scent of burning pine. They eat the root vegetables they roast over the fire, and Dawsyn laughs at the faces he pulls as he tastes them.

“You are an infant,” she chides, her knees touching his.

They sit across from one another at the rickety bench. Ryon’s chair wobbles dangerously, the legs deteriorated.

“Can I ask a question?” Dawsyn says, splitting the fibrous vegetable between her fingers.

“Always.”

“On the mountain, when those two Glacian hunters found me… Kesh and Theodore?”

“What of them?” he grunts, anger locking his jaw.