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I squeezed his hand, silently letting him know, but giving him room to speak.

“He used to tell me life would be better if I didn’t exist.” My blood chilled. Not only at the words but at the defeated acceptance in Tolek’s voice as if it was a message branded into his brain. “And I thought one time he was going to make it happen.”

“What?”

“It was an accident—I think. I was fifteen. You know those stairs in our entry way? The marble ones?” I nodded, cold horror in my chest. “He got a little too forceful, and I went down them. I don’t think he even realized what he was doing. But he…left after. Never said a thing. And it was all because I stayed out too late one night getting into Angels knew what, and he thought I was putting a stain on the family name. It didn’t matter if Lyria stayed out to all hours; she was the perfect heiress who could do no wrong. She wasn’t me.” A distaste I hadn’t realized he retained for his sister twisted his words.

“That’s part of my nightmares. Night after night, down those stairs, and stumbling into things even more awful, all stemming from the failure he made me out to be in those moments.”

I shivered at the way his voice darkened over the last words. At the consideration of what he couldn’t find it in himself to voice.

He cleared his throat. “The cuts healed over quickly, and the bruises were easy enough to hide from our friends as long as I kept my leathers on during training. In other activities, it didn’t matter if they showed. As long as you all didn’t see.” Though impossible for anyone who wasn’t Tolek, one corner of his lips curled up. The way he smiled through his pain twisted my gut. He shouldn’t have to mask it. “I came to your manor afterward, though. Slept on that large couch in the sitting room for three nights.”

“I remember that,” I said, thinking back to the mornings we’d shared over tea, bare feet and untidy hair. “You kept feigning exhaustion when the others left and asked if you could stay.” I’d never hesitated to tell him yes. If I’d known the reason, though, he likely would have had to tie me down to keep my wrath from his father. “You could have gone to Malakai’s. Why didn’t you?”

“You always made me feel safest.” He said it so simply, so boldly, and his words rang through my body in recognition. “I knew you loved me—not in the way I did, or you didn’t know you did in the way I did.” He shook his head. “I knew you’d protect me. Unwaveringly and unquestioningly. It was the only place I wanted to be.”

“I’ll protect you until the day I die, Tolek. I’m sorry for what he did, for the thoughts it left you with, but thank you for trusting me enough to share it with me.” Wrapping my arms around his waist, I added, “You make me feel safe, too.”

“I always will,” he whispered against my hair.

I contemplated what he’d said. He knew then I loved him, though he wasn’t sure how.

I loved Tolek in a lot of small ways. It was the soft drifting of fingertips across skin that raised goosebumps in their wake, and the gentle ruffle of pages of a book turning on a beach at midnight. It was the low, husky laugh when I said something particularly challenging, and the spicy citrus scent that meant home and comfort and fulfilled promises. In the sparkling childhood memories, each morning over tea or races on our mares after long school days.

All those small ways added up to the big ones, too. To the feeling of throwing yourself over the edge of a cliff and praying the other person was there to catch you. To something as powerful as stars bursting and Angels falling. It burned the darkest parts of my life and forged the dawn.

Resting my chin against his chest, I looked up to find him already watching me.

“Yes?” he asked.

I loved him in every language, but I chose one only he would understand.

“You’re my best friend,” I told him.

I’m in love with you, is what it meant.

And from the way he grinned, proudly and almost in disbelief, I knew he understood.

“You’re my best friend, too, Alabath.”

For a few minutes, we stood like that. A pair of hurting and healing warriors beneath a moonlit night, entrusting their hopes and fears unto the other, fingers wrapping tightly around secrets poured into palms as battle worn as our souls. Burdens exchanged to lighten our hearts because two were stronger than one, the two of us the strongest of all.

Tolek saw his past as his flaws. As things making him imperfect and damaged and not worthy. And I had a feeling if this was the first piece he’d chosen to share, it was only the tip of the iceberg of how deeply his pain bled.

“You’ve always made my life better, Tol. You know that?” I tilted my head back to look at him, at the awe seeping into his stare. “You make me want to be a better person. The kind of person who deserves someone as good as you and works to make you feel appreciated every day.”

“You think much too highly of me, Alabath.” He tried to laugh—to lighten the truth of what he’d admitted.

No more, I decided. No longer would he mask his emotions with humor because he was afraid of handing them over or telling me something I didn’t like.

“I don’t.” I shook my head. “I only see you truly. Your mind, your soul, your bravery. I see it all as if drawn out like a map of my own heart.”

He kissed my forehead. “I don’t deserve you. And you deserve better.”

“No,” I said. “I haven’t always been good. I’ve been awful to a lot of people and done many things that are arguably not good. But you make me want to be a better person.”

And slowly, like an unraveling of a tightly wound spool of thread, tension seeped from his muscles. It was incremental at first, nerves over what he’d told me still clinging to every facet of him, but his heart calmed beneath my palm and his shoulders fell.