Page 167 of A Bond so Fierce and Fragile

As if they had all the time in the world.

As if this wasn’t the night before battle and many of the people on this ship probably wouldn’t see another sunset.

A sigh escaped Lessia, and he pulled back to look at her, mouth slightly red from their kissing and eyes filled with silver swirls that moved with the music.

“Is it bad that I am happy right now?” Lessia whispered when Merrick only continued to drink her in.

Because despite everything, she was. She was surrounded by everyone she loved. She’d seen each of them smile for a different reason.

“No.” Merrick rested his forehead against hers. “No, it’s not.”

They stood like that, silent and still, until she whispered, “There is only one thing that could make me happier.”

He must have sensed where her mind went because Merrick responded with a low groan, hands on her back moving down to her ass, pressing her against his hardening cock. “I thought you’d never ask.”

After whipping his head around, he gestured for her to follow him up a staircase she believed led up to the upper deck where Loche’s soldiers usually stood guard.

It was now dark apart from a single lantern shining its light on the wooden wheel and the small stools standing aroundit. A few bottles littered the floor, probably from the soldiers’ precelebrations before they were allowed to leave their posts.

Merrick took a lap around the deck—to make sure no one else had gotten the same idea they had, she presumed—and as she waited for him, Lessia picked at some of the items left on the shelf beside the captain’s chair.

There were a few coins, a sticky deck of cards, and some glasses, but it was the silver-encased mirror that drew Lessia’s attention, and she smiled as she picked it up, remembering her mother having a similar one that she would let Lessia and Frelina borrow sometimes when they wanted to play dress-up.

Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she froze.

The woman looking back at her looked… happy. Content. Excited. With rosy cheeks and bright eyes and hair that she’d finally combed.

For the first time in a long time, Lessia could see the girl she’d once been.

The one who’d been carefree, unafraid, excited for what life could potentially bring.

The one who’d read books about romance and adventure and who’d wished for all that for herself.

The one who’d argued with her parents over bedtimes and food and rules she was expected to follow, and who’d believed not being allowed to ride alone in the forest was the greatest punishment of all.

Her parents’ faces formed in her mind. Her mother’s kind smile when Lessia helped her with dinner. Her father’s proud claps when she learned how to ride.

Then her father’s face morphed into one of pain—the desperation for forgiveness that darkened his amber eyes nearly making her double over when it was replaced with emptiness, his soul finally joining her mother’s in the afterlife.

The memory refused her air, but as she fought for it, the hand that still held the mirror trembling, her reflection only smiled wider, a strange laughter echoing around her, sounding both as if it were right there and as if it were far away.

Frelina’s eyes, void of life, took her father’s place.

Then Amalise’s.

Ardow’s.

Loche’s.

Ledger’s.

Kerym’s.

Raine’s.

Her reflection mocked her, the deranged smile growing wider and wider with every breath Lessia’s body denied her.

“No,” she breathed when an image of Merrick’s bloodied and lifeless body—the one Rioner’s guard had loved to conjure—took over her thoughts.