Page 42

My stomach rolled at that image, but at least a little less violently than before; rubbing a fluffy towel over his shoulderblades, chasing every last rivulet of warm water trickling down his bronze skin, was enough of a reminder that rightnow, there were no arrows to be seen around us. ‘I know. I don’t think that’s the problem.’

He was silent again, wings curling ever so slightly towards me as I continued to dry him off. I finished my work on his back, then knelt and continued down his muscular thighs, the back of his knees. His cock had hardened to a most alluring state under my ministrations, but I forced myself to keep my hands away from it, from the temptation of his slender hips and taut buttocks – it would be either fucking or talking now, and the talking was too important.

Instead, I dried his shins with gentle, circular motions and added, ‘I’m well aware you’re the sort of person to take ridiculous risks. I don’t expect that to change. It’s just …’

He turned his head a fraction when I didn’t continue. ‘Hmm?’

‘It’s just that I don’t get why you tookthisone,’ I blurted, and suddenly I understood. Suddenly it had a name, the quiet dread burning inside me – incomprehension, unanswered questions, the rotting, poisonous seedlings of doubt. ‘Usually when you take risks – when you hurt yourself and pretend it’s nothing to worry about – you’re doing it to save others, aren’t you? You tortured yourself to spare the Mother’s victims. You sacrificed yourself so I could escape the court. But I just don’t understand … I just don’t see …’

What he’d tried to die for this this time.

For a stronghold we’d all agreed we’d give up when the time came? For a castle stripped of all valuable shreds of information or sentimental possessions?

For conclusions we’d already expected?

It didn’t make sense. He knew that we needed him more than we needed any of those things, didn’t he? He knewIneeded him more than that? This was what the lingering shadow of panichad tried to tell me, that the puzzle wasn’t complete yet – that there had to be something else behind this reckless decision of his, something that truly justified the chance that he might not make it out of the encounter alive.

And that I had not the faintest idea what it was.

It flared in full force now, the anxiety lying dormant beneath my skin. I dropped the towel as I rose to my feet, mind turning in such frantic circles that my lips couldn’t even begin to catch up. If I didn’t understand … that meant I couldn’t make sure this didn’t happen a second time. Which meant I could be caught by surpriseagain, another near-lethal fight without a shred of warning – or worse, that next time he might not be so lucky and I would not even know until it was too late. Which meant—

‘Em,’ he said.

‘I just …’ The lavender steam, so safe and comforting a moment ago, had become smothering fumes in my lungs. The walls started turning around me. ‘I just don’t—’

Creon’s hand clasped my wrist.

Strong, calloused fingers, pressing into my arm with the strength of a protective hug – and at once my thoughts uncoiled. His voice might be unfamiliar to me. His words I could ignore. This touch, on the other hand, was a language I spoke fluently, so instinctively that it no longer required a single thought to obey: skin on skin, power on power, the savage intensity of his focus radiating into every nerve ending of my body. I gasped in a breath, and the walls stopped turning, his grip anchoring me to reality.

‘Cactus.’ This time my mind did latch on to the sound of his voice – hoarse, low, but with an edge of sharpness to it I couldn’t make sense of. ‘Breathe before you talk.’

I gulped in another lavender-scented lungful of air.

‘Good. Keep doing that.’ He let go of my wrist and scooped me off the floor, cradling me against his damp chest as he carried meback into the colder, clearer bedroom air. His heart thundered against his ribs, a little too fast and a little too vehement, as if it was trying to break through his ribcage to reach out to me. ‘I won’t die so easily, Em. I promise I won’t.’

‘I know you won’t dieeasily,’ I managed as he sank down on the bed and installed my naked body between his thighs, my back against his chest. ‘But if you start making a habit of throwing yourself at entire armies for something as trivial as a few experiments, you—’

He stiffened behind me. ‘Astrivial?’

Fuck.

I no longer had the faintest idea of what was happening – what he was thinking, what I was supposed to be thinking – but that, the abrupt bite of his voice told me, had not been the right thing to say.

‘I … I just mean …’ The words seemed to be elbowing each other aside on the way to my lips, tumbling over each other. ‘No one was in immediate danger of dying, were they? There could have been other ways to find this information. Less dangerous ways. I—’

‘Em.’ His arms tightened around me. ‘Do you really think I would have jumped into that if I’d thought there were safer ways to figure out the same information?’

Did I?

Not really, notrationally, yet perhaps a small part of me did – feared that I had so fundamentally misunderstood the sort of person he was at war, that I had overlooked some glory-hungry part of him that didn’t care about sense or strategy. ‘No, but—’

‘And we had to know.’ He was speaking faster than usual – as if he’d barely heard me. As if he wanted,neededto convince me of something and wasn’t sure he could. ‘People weren’t dyingyet, but they absolutely will be, and we cannot determine how to keep as many as possible alive if we have no idea of ourstrong and weak spots in battle. What do you think would have happened if Agenor had come up with some strategy hinging on magic use and we’d found out halfway through that the bindings were in our way?’

‘No, I know!’ I wrestled from his embrace to turn and face him, breath going shallow again. ‘I’m not saying it’s not useful to know – just that maybe it wouldn’t have been worthdyingfor.’

‘So you’d rather have sent others to die finding out?’ he said sharply.

It would have been so easy for him to soften that blow. To turn it into a teasing remark, a joke to ease the mounting tension. Instead, it shot from those full, soft lips with the force of a fist to the face, a contrast that had me wincing in his lap – what on earth was he doing, turning that question into something so very close to a bitter accusation?