Page 32 of Brimstone

I stared at him, waiting. When he didn’t lift his head to look me in the eyes, a blast of laughter ripped out of me, startling him. “What? What’s funny?” he asked.

“I don’t have a true name to trade, either, Fisher. I’m just Saeris. You can be just Kingfisher, too.”

I expected him to laugh as well. To realize that he was sad for no reason, but gently, he reached for my hand and slowly raised it to his lips. He kissed me, his warm breath fanning out over my skin. “It doesn’t work that way, Osha. It doesn’t matter that you weren’t given a true name. I was, and unless I share it with you, the ceremony can’t take root. There’s nothing to be done aboutit. So . . . I do understand. If marriage is important to you, then—”

“Please stop talking,” I breathed. “I think you’re about to say something stupid, and I already told you at dinner. I don’t need to get married. You were right. We’re God-Bound. That’s far more significant than a wedding ceremony. We’ll live our lives together and be happy, no matter what.”

I couldn’t read him. His expression was so guarded. It felt as though he were trying to peer into my soul. Clenching his jaw, he exhaled down his nose, then said, “You’re sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure!” I laughed, but then sobered quickly, knowing what I was about to say. “I love you, Fisher.” It was the first time I’d said it. “I love you, and nothing else matters beyond that. Whereveryouare, I’ll beg the gods and all the fates to let me be there, too,” I whispered.

A slender tendril of shadow trailed along the line of my cheekbone, caressing my skin, soft as a butterfly’s wing, as Kingfisher’s eyes flashed. “Good,” he growled. And then my feet were off the floor, and his hands were below my thighs, lifting me. I reacted, wrapping my legs around his waist, looping my arms around his neck, as he kicked his bedroom door open at last and carried me inside.

“Say it again,” he growled.

My cheeks were burning. “Say what?”

“Don’t play with me.”

“But I—”

“Please.”

I leaned back so that I could look at him properly, and the open, raw emotion on his face stole my smile. The hope in his eyes destroyed me.

Like there was a possibility that it wasn’t true. Like there was any realm or reality in which I didn’t love him, but he waspraying that I might. He was out of his godscursed mind. “I love you, Fisher. OfcourseI do. Always. Forever.”

His mouth slammed down onto mine. The kiss was pure fire, and relief, and a culmination of all the unanswered tension that had been mounting between us for the past few days. He tasted me, his tongue exploring my mouth, his heart racing against my chest as he wound his fingers into my hair.

When he drew back, the quicksilver in his eye had formed a fine corona around his iris. “There are too many pricked ears in this godscursed manor,” he groaned. “They aren’t going to like what they hear over the next few hours.”

A shiver sank into my bones at that. He planned on being inside of me forhours. He was planning on making me scream. Gods . . .

When he kissed me again, cradling the back of my head in his hand, something within me shifted. A pin falling into place inside the tumbler of a lock. I could suddenlyfeelthe air inside the room. The way it eddied around the furniture and rose up to bloom against the roof rafters. I didn’t understand how I knew to do it, but I felt the air thickening. The molecules swaying with the tide of the room stopped, stilling, and my ears suddenly felt as if they were full of cotton wool.

The instant it happened, Fisher noticed, too. He stopped carrying me toward the bed. His spine stiffened, his demeanor changing in an instant. “What just happened?” he asked breathily. “Something . . .”

“I don’t know. I just . . . I didn’t want anyone to hear us. I reached out, and I did it.”

He turned his attention back to me, his dark waves falling into his eyes as he ran the bridge of his nose along my jawline. “That’s a neat trick, Little Osha. An affinity to a small magic, perhaps. I wonder how many others you have up your sleeve.”His voice was a deep rumble that started somewhere down in his boots. “I can’t wait for you to show me.”

He had a level of faith in me that I had struggled to have in myself over the past few days. The marks on my hands didn’t move underneath my skin the way his did sometimes. They were locked in place, the lines beautiful and intricate. I had no idea what they meant, or what I might be capable of because of them.

Fisher’s hands skated over my bare arms, fingertips tracing the script that wound around my wrists as if he were contemplating the same thing—but he said nothing further about the binding. A wave of euphoria rocked me as he ducked, running the bridge of his nose along the line of my jaw a second time.

Things had been hard after my mother had died. Hayden was even more of a handful then than he was now. For a few months, after I’d made sure my brother was out cold and dead to the world at night, I’d go and lay on the cracked roof tiles and smoke myself into oblivion. Getting high wasn’t the answer. I knew that even as I did it. But, for a brief period of time, it was a crutch that helped get me through the day. I’d stopped when I started feeling like I needed it instead of wanted it.

The high that came whenever Fisher looked at me was way better than any bliss I’d found on the rooftops overlooking the Third. There was no stopping this. And why would I want to stop it? He was more than an addiction. He was life itself. We were separate beating chambers of the same heart now.

My head swam as he buried his face into the crook of my neck and inhaled deeply. He did that so often now, especially when he thought no one else would notice. Goose bumps broke out all over my body as he drew the air into his nose, over my skin. I was boneless. Limp. I couldn’t even hold my head up with him standing so close to me. “Do I smell the same?” I whispered.

Fisher cradled the back of my head in his hand, supporting its weight as he pulled back and looked down at me. “Yes,” he said roughly. And then, in the same breath, “No. Before, you smelled like fresh crushed leaves and the mountain air before a cold snap. A subtle hint of spices and citrus, and fire smoke.”

I stared at his mouth, watching him speak, mesmerized. “And . . . now?”

“Now, those scents are amplified a thousandfold. You smell like excitement. You smell like laughter. And peace. And love.”

“Those things have scents, do they?” I said, teasing him softly.