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His lips found mine—and this was what tipped me over the edge. Not the frantic, powerful pounding of his hips. Not the feel of his hands moving over me, finding every sensitive spot that made me gasp and convulse a little more wildly. Not the rasp of his breaths or the pure desire dripping from his words.

It was the soft and certain way he kissed me and then pulled slowly back to watch what came next—as if there had never been a doubt between us and there never would be. I was his, he was mine, and there was no questioning it.

Mine.

As that thought crashed over me, so did the waves of my release. Those waves caught him, too, drawing him alongside me, deep into a pool of final, untethered bliss.

He came with a roar that vibrated deep in my bones, sending a second surge of my own release spiraling through me.

I floated in that blissful space with him, toes curled and muscles pleasantly taut, for several long moments before the room came back into focus around me. Even then it seemed brighter, more vibrant than before.

Aleks gathered me in his arms, and for a few minutes, we returned to the quiet repose of earlier—curled in the chair together, heartbeats racing, skin sensitive and shivering at every point where we touched.

Eventually, we unfolded from one another and stumbled into the tiny washroom to clean up. He brought me one of his shirts to use as a nightgown, and then he crawled into the bed while I lingered by the sink.

My gaze had gotten caught on my reflection in the mirror above it—on both the scars on my face and neck, and on the shadows Aleks had drawn out, the latter of which were still lazily drifting around my skin.

I watched as one of those shadows caressed the widest scar on my throat and then swept toward my arm, circling it and eventually winding around the turquoise bracelet at my wrist. The movement felt deliberate. Sentient.

I realized I was holding my breath, and I forced myself to exhale slowly.

“What’s wrong?” Aleks asked, his voice slightly slurred, heavy with sleep.

Nothing, I started to say.

“…Were you telling the truth earlier,” I asked, instead, “when you said you thought of me while you were imprisoned?”

He took a moment to answer, clearly losing his battle against sleep. His eyes were closed, his face halfway buried in the pillows, but his eventual reply was quiet yet certain: “I thought of you and your shadows,” he said, “and somehow the darkness around me didn’t seem so terrible.”

My response caught in my throat. I wasn’t even sure what I’d been planning to say; I couldn’t name the emotion choking me, much less put into words all that I felt in that moment.

By the time I found my voice again, his breathing had slowed and his muscles had relaxed more completely. His eyelids occasionally fluttered, but he was obviously fully lost to whatever dreams had been waiting for him.

I moved quietly into the room, settling onto the very edge of the bed, not wanting to wake him. I didn’t mean to stare, either.

But I couldn’t help myself.

Out of everything we’d done and said and survived together, something about those words he’d just spoken shattered me—and then reformed me—more than anything else.

He didn’t simply accept my shadows.

He found…comfortin them.

One of those shadows was still tightly woven around my turquoise bracelet. I stared at it, thinking of the moment that bracelet had slipped from my wrist in the swords’ chamber. Of the things such a small act had unleashed, and of the power bound within me—power I was going to need for the battle that lay just ahead.

Taking a deep breath, I pulled the bracelet from my wrist and placed it on the bedside table. The urge to put it back on struck immediately, but I resisted, turning away and huddling closer to Aleks instead.

His arms wrapped tightly around me, pulling me against his warm chest. Despite his heat, I shivered. My magic was shifting wildly inside of me, a storm of frigid wind and overwhelming energy.

But Aleksander’s hold stayed secure, drawing me away from the cold and the dark, just as he had that night at Lake Nyras, and countless times since. Every time I thought I might give in to the desire to reach for the binding on the bedside table, he would pull me in again and kiss my forehead. Still asleep, I thought, and yet, more than once, I would have sworn I heard him say the same words he’d said to me that night in the water—

I’ve got you.

I finally let myself believe it.

And I finally slept.

Chapter Forty-Six