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With gentle steps, I crossed the room, heart racing. He didn’t turn, didn’t seem to know he wasn’t alone. My fingertips danced in anticipation, the need to touch him was fast becoming desperate the closer I came.

One pace from his back, I paused to admire the way his long fingers took to the strings of the lyre. Hardly a thought, more rote motion, and the sound was still a sweet melody, smooth and calming.

I held my breath and reached for the mask. The moment my fingers touched the edge, Silas froze. His breath was rough, but he didn’t turn.

“I want to see you,” I whispered. “There isn’t a need to hide, not from me.”

I eased the mask away from the damaged side of his face. The scar was angry and deep, a beautiful reminder that every step this man had taken was for the benefit of my life.

I ran my fingertips along the edges of the puckered skin. Silas shuddered.

“Does touching it hurt you?”

“No.” His voice was a gritty rasp. “It’s . . . just new.”

Touch was a long-forgotten memory for him, and it broke pieces of my heart even more. Slowly, I slid my arms around his neck from behind, hugging his body to my chest and let my cheek fall to the back of his head.

“There is a bond between us,” I whispered. “I saw it in Ari’s sleep. I saw it burn like a golden flame. It’s burning again.”

“There is always a choice.” The words slid between his teeth as though they were jagged glass in his throat. “Always a choice, Little Rose.”

“I’ve taken long enough to make my choice.” I tilted his face and waited for those tortured eyes to hold mine. “You’re my Whisper. My voice in the dark. You’re mine.”

He released the lyre and carefully adjusted on the bench so he faced me, my legs between his knees. Silas raised his hands hesitantly, but soon brought his large palms to rest on my hips.

“This ends the tale, Little Rose. I do not know the outcome. You do this, there are no backward glances. Accept the bond, then you belong to me. The way I have always belonged to you.”

Gods, he was . . .intense. There was a touch of madness in his eyes, and I didn’t want to change it. I wanted to know it, embrace it. I wanted to see all the layers of my whisper the way I suspected I did as a child.

Back then, the bond between us wasn’t filled with the burn of desire and need the way it scorched in my veins now, but I recalled a personal love for a nameless boy in my shadowed memories.

“The Norns keep trying to take credit for bringing me back to you,” I said, a smirk on my mouth. “But the truth is, Silas, we bested those stupid fates long before they found us. You were mine before the world broke. You’ve been mine through the lifetimes. You will always be mine.”

I kissed him.

Silas jolted, but in a few breaths, took what control I thought I had and claimed it for himself. This kiss was fierce, brutal, almost punishing. Different than the one we’d shared on the Row, this was a kiss laden in promises, of desire, of unshakeable devotion to what we had always been.

Bonded, deeper than the heart. He was mine to my soul.

Silas must’ve felt the same, for something snapped in his docile, nearly hesitant movements. He pulled away, eyes dark with desire, and tangled my hair around his hands. Silas tugged my head back, altering the angle of my mouth before crushing his lips back to mine.

His tongue was warm, needy. The taste of him was like clean rain, a new delight I would cling to until my last breath.

I wasn’t experienced. No mistake, neither was Silas, but my body responded to every brush of his fingertips. I arched into him, desperate for more. Without a thought, I leveraged each leg onto the bench, straddling his hips.

“Dammit,” he breathed out against my lips.

“Don’t like this?” Gods, I felt I might peel out of my skin if he pushed me back.

Silas’s eyes burned with a touch of frenzy. “Like this? Yes, I like this. You’re rocking against my damn cock.”

My cheeks heated. It was a new word. A little seductive. A little filthy. I liked it.

To torment him a bit more, I slid my knees wider, lowering my core over the strained length in his trousers, and swayed my hips.

Silas coughed. His fingers dug into my skin until his marks would be left behind.

I liked that too.