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This was best for both of us. Our emotions weren’t steady after everything tonight. We needed to recover. To think. To reassess.

When I finally set her on the floor, she laughed.

“What?” I asked, latching the window behind us.

Vale inclined her head, the smile on her lips slicing through my chest.

Looking over her shoulder, I grumbled, “There’s always only one fucking bed.”

I made Vale take the bed again and settled on my sleeping mat.

The fire crackled beside my head as I laid on my back, eyes locked on the ceiling and mind replaying everything she’d said.

“Cypherion Kastroff.” Vale’s voice cut through the room, impatient and admonishing. I propped myself on an elbow to meet her eyes, glowing in the dark. “Stop being such a stubborn ass, and sleep in the damn bed.”

Chapter Twelve

Vale

Fates be damned, he laughed.

It was so quiet, I thought I’d imagined it at first, but Cypherion shook his head as he chuckled.

“That’s not a good idea,” he said, voice rough, and he flopped down on his back again.

“Why not?” I asked, scurrying to the end of the bed where I could still see him.

“Because.” He watched the ceiling adamantly.

“Because…”

Cypherion considered for a moment, searching the low wooden beams. The air thickened with each second he didn’t speak, heavy indecision and something akin to longing clouding between us. Finally, he sighed, “Because, Vale, I only have so much restraint.”

His words went right through me, burning straight to my core. Flashes of memories—of teeth and lips and tongues against skin, of cries of pleasure and him filling me—ignited a familiar ache within me.

But there was something in his tone that hurt enough to dull that longing. A sense of sadness that said he did not want to want those things with me.

“I’m not going to tempt you into anything, Cypherion,” I promised, but I couldn’t keep the scorn from seeping into my voice.

He heard it. I knew he did based on the way his eyes flicked back to mine and regret bathed the blues.

We stayed like that for a moment, watching one another, and the heartbreak gathered between us.

Him begging me for answers.

Me failing to provide them.

Him staying with me that night.

Me telling him I was leaving as dawn broke.

“Okay, Stargirl,” he finally said.

And then, he was moving around the other side of the bed, and I was scrambling back beneath the covers.

We both lay there silently for a moment, watching the ceiling. Memories from Damenal collected between us, him coming for me in the fighting ring tonight piling above that, and words and secrets exchanged on the roof topping it all.

I’d told him of my Fate ties. Of how unlikely and coveted they were, of how I didn’t know what it meant. Perhaps I shouldn’t have, but a piece of my riling heart had settled as I did. And maybe a piece of him did, too. A sliver that wanted answers, that wanted to understand why I’d kept secrets.