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A meagre grin crossed his face.Stop trying to convince me I’m not a fucking prick, Em. You’re not helping yourself by picking an impossible stance to defend.

‘Youarea fucking prick,’ I said, leaning over to tuck a strand of hair behind his pointed ear. He shivered at the touch. ‘I’ve never argued otherwise. And you’re a vain, reckless idiot, you have a terrible tendency towards melodrama, and you don’t have the faintest clue how to deal with people when you can’t threaten or infuriate or seduce them. None of that is a lie. It’s just that you forget to be realistic about the other side of you.’

Ah.He rested his head against the braided twigs.Like my pretty face.

I scoffed. ‘Skin is just skin.’

This time his grin looked significantly more like a true grin.It’s rather impolite to turn my own weapons against me, cactus.

‘Shouldn’t have started training me, then,’ I said and stuck out my tongue. That, too, seemed to cheer him up better than expected. ‘But fine, I can wield a weapon of my own if you insist. Tell me something pleasant about yourself.’

Had I told him to go hug Tared, his watery grin couldn’t have evaporated any faster.Something … what?

‘Something positive.’ I could feel a smile grow on my face as I scrambled up in the abundance of soft pillows and crossed my arms. ‘You know, realism. Or did you want to convince me there’s not a single nice thing to be said about you?

He blinked.Well—

‘Because in that case you’ll have to assume that Lyn and Naxi and I are all utter fools to think you might be salvageable at all,’ I interrupted as briskly as I could in my hushed voice, ‘and that doesn’t sound terribly realistic to me, either. So?’

The way his eyes darted to the curtain-covered doorway and back to my face was vaguely reminiscent of a trapped animal looking for escape.

I climbed into his lap just in case he was earnestly considering fleeing, straddling his powerful thighs so that he would at the very least cause an unhelpful lot of noise if he tried to storm out. His muscles strained tight beneath me, mocking my attempts to keep him in place. He smelled of blood and summer – a strange, wild fragrance that made my stomach clench in anticipation. I swallowed and tried to focus on his face instead of the sensation of his hard muscles pressing into me, tried not to think of those quiet moments on the ship and all the places where his hands had wandered …

He had stopped looking at the door. His eyes had swept back to my face with the full intensity of his demon senses, aware of every unwelcome spark that burned through me.

Damn it. This was not the moment to get distracted, no matter how delightful the temptation. I cocked my head at him, holding his ink-black gaze, and slowly repeated, ‘Say something pleasant about yourself, Creon. I promise I’ll adequately reward you.’

Something flared in his eyes – something that made me expect for one breathless moment that he’d flip me over in the blankets and kiss the next sentence on my lips to oblivion. But he slumped against the wall without any seductive attempts to distract me and flatly signed,I suppose I can be reasonably intelligent at times.

I snorted. ‘You suppose?’

Yes.He clenched his jaw.Not enough?

‘I suppose I love you,’ I said, pulling a face. ‘Hear how convincing that sounds?’

For fuck’s sake.He forced a quiet laugh over his lips.This is torture, Em.

Not much of an exaggeration, probably – he may have been trained to suffer the sting of blades and knuckles without flinching, but the ragged edges of his own mind were an adversary he’d happily avoided for most of his life. I shrugged and said, ‘I learned from the best. Try again, and make it sound a little more convincing, please.’

I’m… He sucked in an unsteady breath. His fingers paused, twitching into several signs they never ended up finishing, before they finally settled on a weak,Intelligent enough?

Still barely passable, but at least it was progress. I leaned over and pressed a kiss to his forehead, breathing in the metallic tang of blood that had mixed with the familiar scent of his body. His breath caught at the first contact of skin to skin, and again it took all I had not to tear off his shirt and find the far easier, far more immediate comfort of pleasure in his arms.

But this was not about comfort. This was not about the easy road.

I made myself move away from him, bringing a much-needed foot of cool air between our faces, and whispered, ‘Tell me another thing.’

He swallowed audibly. His gaze followed me with hawkish focus, but his hands lay unmoving in the blankets, as if he hadn't even heard me.

‘Creon.’ If not for the flimsy walls, my voice may have grown louder. ‘You convinced yourself this battle was lost before you even started fighting it. To hell with that. Thereisa reason I love you, and if I have to punch that insight into you, so be it. Try to see yourself through my eyes. Tell me another thing.’

His lips shaped a curse, but his hand came up.I don’t suppose you fell in love with me because of the pretty face and the impressive title?

I snorted. ‘Rather despite the title, I think. Stop trying to talk your way out of it.’

I …He rose up a fraction, jaw clenching.I’m not some backstabbing bastard to the people I care about? I mean– he’d interpreted my unimpressed eyebrow correctly –I suppose I can be loyal. I mean—

I burst out laughing, unable to help myself. He followed the example a moment later, dropping his arm back into the blankets – wry, apologetic laughter, but laughter all the same, a thousand miles removed from the gloomy pit in which I’d found him. I slumped chuckling against his chest, drinking in the boom of his heartbeat, and wondered if it was possible to love him hard enough to make him understand, hard enough to crack through that inhuman armour of his self-loathing.