Page 23

Chapter Twenty-Two: Rhea

Autumn woods and the spicy undertone of earthy leaves fill my next inhale, my body subtly relaxing at the scent. The warmth of the sun blankets my skin, my light magic waking up because of it.

The familiar tingling in my fingers and toes after a visit to the Middle begins, like the scraping of a thousand needles. But then it deepens, those needles pushing into my skin—sharp and unforgiving. I hiss through my teeth, brows drawing low as I try to wiggle my extremities to shake off the pain. The feeling only amplifies as it travels up my arms and legs until it’s dripping down into my torso like a slowly building waterfall of pain.

Selene said there would be a physical toll, a cost, for how long I spent in the Middle. She wasn’t kidding.

“Rhea?”

His voice. His. Voice. Despite everything, the sound is a welcome respite—a shimmering light shone into a dark cave. I try to open my mouth to respond, to say anything at all, but I can’t. The sensation continues as the prickling feeling pierces through my skin and muscles and veins, going down to the very bone.

“Rhea, please wake up.” His normally deep tenor is nothing more than a shaken rasp against lips.

A groan manages to vibrate in my throat, my mouth still unable to open as I’m plunged further into the pain of being back. The weight of his hand covers my own, cloth of some sort between our skin as his fingers tighten around mine.

“Sunshine,” he rasps again, “please wake up. I need you.”

Nox’s hand squeezes mine again before he lets it go, along with a strangled breath. Finally, the stinging sensation begins to lessen, retreating out of my abdomen and flooding back through my arms and legs.

My eyes fly open as I gasp, air rushing into me like I’ve been stuck underwater and have finally broken the surface. My vision is blurry, odd shapes and colors melding together and swirling.

“Nox,” I rasp out, but it’s hardly a noise as the weight of the world around us begins to suffocate me. Layers upon layers slam into me, and the last thing I hear before darkness once again takes over is Nox calling out my name.

My eyes flutter open, the room I remembered to be lit with sun now draped in night. I immediately wiggle my fingers and find that they are much easier to move, free of any prickling sensation. It’s painful to swallow, my throat raw and scratchy. Turning my head slowly, I look to my side and see a figure outlined on the bed next to me. Even with only the light of one of those small flames on the other side of the room, I still know it’s Nox. Nox— how easy his name now sounds in my head, not quite as foreign as it once did.

I trace his face with my eyes, noting how his body is tense even at rest. Balled fists lay in front of him like he’s ready to strike as soon as a threat is revealed. His breathing is easy but not deep enough to suggest that he’s fully asleep.

Moving as quietly as I can, I change my position so that I’m lying on my side facing him. Our bodies are mirrored on the bed, not quite knee-to-knee but certainly heart-to-heart. Nox’s breathing stays even, his body curled to take up the smallest amount of the bed, which is still almost half of it because he is so big. Tenderly, afraid to disturb the air around him, I lift my hand and gently push my fingers through his hair. Simultaneously, we both release a deeper exhale, as if touching somehow unlocked a breath.

I think about the first time I ever touched Nox’s hair during our passionate first kiss. It was the pinnacle of a fixation that seems so silly now. Of all the things I could possibly be obsessed with about Nox—and there were many to choose from—one of the greatest longings I had was simply to run my fingers through his sable waves. It seemed so simple, so banal, but I suppose to someone who had spent her life alone and in a tower, the simplest things sometimes felt the most monumental.

My fingers trail out of his hair and move achingly slowly down his temple, his skin soft under my touch. Smoothness gives way to stubble the closer I get to his jaw. My thumb brushes beneath his lower lip, and emotion constricts my throat.

Staring at him like this, with my touch unhurried, ushers in memories of the quiet moments at the inn. When he gave me a journal; when we confessed that we loved each other. It felt less like an admission and more like an acknowledgment of the inevitable. After my time in the Middle, after the things I had seen there, I could find the truth in that. In the idea that, despite whatever my fate is to be, it might have always led to this somehow—to him and me.

“Rhea?” He says my name roughly as his eyes open.

“Hi,” I respond quietly.

Nox shoots up to sit, rubbing a hand over his face as if to wake himself from a dream. His wide gaze never leaves mine while his chest heaves with rapid breaths. I join him in sitting up, my arms a little shaky from the inactivity of however long I’ve been lying here.

“Are you really awake? Are you really here?” He reaches out to touch me but stops midway.

“Yes.” The word is tough with my throat so dry, and it makes something in Nox snap out of his mystified state.

He quickly moves off the bed, crossing out into the sitting room where a small table with a silver tray glints under a dancing flame—a golden pitcher and glass cups stacked on top. Returning to my side, he hands me a glass of water, the cool liquid quelling my aching throat. My hand shakes as I hand it back to him, his fingers lingering over mine.

“I’m okay,” I whisper.

He pushes the wayward strands of hair back from his forehead, the movement making a small smile uncurl on my face. “Like hell you are,” he says warily.

Turning on the bed, my legs dangle off the edge as I watch him pace in front me. His bare feet are silent, the only tell to his movement the lightly squeaking wooden floorboards beneath them.

“I promise I’m fine.” Deciding I want to prove it to him, I try to stand and immediately crumple under my own weight.

Nox moves quickly, catching me before I drop to the floor. “Fine?” he questions, our chests flush together.

“Okay, maybe my legs are a little stiff, but I’ve been in bed for, what, a day or two?”

Nox’s fingers tighten on my back as he holds me, his gaze piercing. “Try six days.”

I freeze, my hands holding on to the front of his thin gray shirt causing the fabric to bunch. “That can’t be right,” I murmur. “You’re sure?”

“I have counted every hour—every minute —since you passed out, Rhea. I’m sure.” His anxious voice hits me harshly, and guilt ties my stomach in knots. “It is the sixth night.”

“Have you stayed here the whole time?”

“I wasn’t going to leave you. I promised you I never would.” I close my eyes and lean my forehead onto his chest, breathing him in. “Only you could ever hold that power over me,” he confesses.

“I don’t want that power. I don’t want to do that to you. And I want to talk about everything, truly I do. But learning I have been laying in a bed for six days has left me somehow more exhausted and desperately wanting to take a bath. And hungry.” I realize with a small laugh.

Nox’s hand relaxes on my back as it moves in soothing strokes. “Why don’t you take a shower, and I’ll have some food brought up. And then we can talk.”

My head lifts from his chest, our eyes connecting through a chasm of the unspoken. “And then we can talk,” I agree.

Nox shows me how to use the shower, the mechanics the same as the one I used in Celatum. Standing under the warm water, I nearly jolt at the realization that Celatum and our entire night at the inn was apparently over a week ago. I had been in the Middle for the equivalent of six nights, and yet it felt like less than half of that. My heart pounds as I turn off the water and grab a soft black towel to dry myself with.

The scent of Nox is everywhere in his bathroom and now on my skin, and I can’t say that I dislike it. He had left a pair of sleeping clothes that I think must have been his sister’s on the counter, the silk short bottoms and sleeveless top soft against my skin and the color a pretty dark blue.

Running a comb through my hair, my fingers tighten around its handle at the thought of our impending conversation. Confessions sit heavily on my chest, an excruciating weight that threatens each exaggerated breath I take. I know that I love him, that a life without him isn’t something I want. But the disquiet whispers that plague my mind and infiltrate my thoughts are hard things to get rid of.

He has an entire other life here, one that I wasn’t told of. One that I’m terrified will hold other secrets that may be just as hard to push past as learning the truth about his involvement with Alexi.

I pull my damp hair over my shoulder and quickly brush my teeth with the spare toothbrush that Nox had said his mother’s lady-in-waiting, Sarai, brought. Finally feeling somewhat put together again, I turn and reach for the door handle, my hand hesitating in the air for a few seconds before I force myself to grab and turn it. Steam billows out of the bathroom and into Nox’s room from behind me. Humidity sits thick in the air, a byproduct of both my shower and the summer air seeping in from the open window.

“How are you feeling?” he asks from where he sits on the bed, his back against the dark wooden headboard. His gray eyes are sharp on me, their awareness causing goosebumps to break out over my skin.

“Better, thank you.”

“I had them bring up some food and more water for you.” Standing, he gestures to the small table out in the sitting room.

Nodding, I follow him out and sit in front of a platter of fresh fruit—most of which I’ve never seen before—and some bread. Going for the latter, I then pour myself some water and begin to eat quietly, trying to ignore the sudden awkwardness as Nox sits on one of the couches. I take in the space, the dark colors slowly tugging on memories of when I first arrived. My eyes roam from the wooden beams above to the plush rugs below and then to the corner of the room, where a black and decayed plant sits. Odd. I look back to Nox, our gazes clashing before he gives me a barely there smile and then forces his eyes closed, tilting his head back against the couch.

My stomach drops at the movement. “Are you alright?”

His eyes open, and even in the dim light, I notice the dark circles that bruise his skin as if he’s been up for days. That guilt rears its head again when I realize that he probably has.

“Better,” he says, mimicking my earlier answer though his version sounds less truthful.

Sighing, I push up from the table and walk over to him, ignoring the way his eyes deepen in color the longer he looks at me. I also ignore the way my stomach clenches under his attention. “Let’s make a vow,” I say, sitting on the couch next to him.

Nox runs a hand through his already-mussed hair and then nods tentatively. It’s unsettling to see him so uneasy, to observe his powerful body made rigid with anxious tension and know that, at least in some part, I am the reason why.

“From here on out, there is only honesty between us. No matter how hard, how difficult or fantastical that honesty may seem”—he quirks a brow at that—“we only tell the truth.”

His head nods in agreement, sending a few strands of raven waves over his forehead again. My fingers twist into the silk of my top, nerves growing the longer we look at each other.

“Are you truly alright?” I ask again.

Nox blows a breath out, his tired expression betraying his words from earlier. “Not really.” Then his gaze drops from mine, but not before utter defeat crosses his features.

I yearn to reach a hand out to him, to cup his face and tell him that it’s going to be okay, but I don’t know if that is exactly true. We are two people afloat in the same sea made up of love and sacrifices and secrets kept, and it feels like we are drifting farther apart.

“Rhea, nothing has ever torn me apart more than keeping these secrets from you, specifically the one about Alexi,” he says softly, an admission that I can tell comes from a ragged place within him. “I meant what I said earlier that my plan was to tell you absolutely everything. I just thought it would be better to say it all once we got here. Once we were away from King Dolian and you could see with your own eyes the place and people I was trying to keep safe.”

I chew on my lower lip, fear of this unknown space between us working hard to keep my questions locked inside of me. But I had promised honesty, and I meant it. So I break open a box filled with the things I need to know from him.

“How could you look me in the eye and say everything you said, all your professed truths and declarations of love, and still be holding so much of yourself from me? You knew what he meant to me. You knew how I had grown up. How naive I was. How sheltered.” What started out as a simple question turns into an inferno of accusations within me, sparked by the anger I hadn’t realized was still simmering so brightly.

“Everything I said was the gods’ honest truth, Rhea—”

“But we aren’t really talking about everything you said, are we?” My voice is hardly above a whisper, but it strikes Nox like an arrow hitting its target. My magic rises within me, and while it’s mostly a warm feeling, there’s also a hint of bitter cold.

“No, I suppose we aren’t.”

The expanse of that invisible ocean between us grows. Perhaps it was foolish to think we could overcome this. Maybe I held too much hope in what Selene had said in the Middle. Could loving someone be enough to bridge a gap that now seemed impossible to close?

“Do you know that I have never once been told the entire truth by anyone in my life? Can you possibly imagine what it feels like to finally think you’ve found someone who truly sees you, who says they love you as you are, and find out that it was a lie ?”

“It wasn’t a lie,” he argues in response, his body leaning towards mine. “Four years ago, I left my title, my friends and family, my home , to find what we perceived to be a threat coming from the Mortal Kingdom. I know it doesn’t hold a candle to the lifetime of shit you’ve been through, but for me, those four years felt like trying to walk with heavy chains shackled to my ankles and the weight of my kingdom across my back. Yes , I had to pretend. I had to do it every single day, except for the few rare visits I got to make back home, but even then, by the time I finally could relax enough to be myself, I was packing up to leave again.” Nox takes a deep breath, his eyes tracing the outline of my face. “I lived in that kingdom, serving King Dolian, with only one thing on my mind: keeping the people that I loved safe. I was willing to sacrifice anyone who stood in my way. I was willing to sacrifice myself to ensure it. No matter the cost, I wanted to pay it because here, in this place?” He pauses to gesture out with his arms. “It’s where every single thing that held any sort of value to me was waiting. Waiting for me to find out if they would stay safe or if they had to prepare for an attack I wasn’t sure they could defend against. And then I met you .”

The last sentence is practically said through gritted teeth, as if that painful realization broke something in him. At this moment, it nearly breaks me.

“I remember going up the stairs of that tower for the first time with a damn smile on my face because I was so sure —without a shadow of a doubt—that I was going to find what I was sent there for. Finally , after four fucking years, I was close enough to get the answer I desperately needed. One that my kingdom needed. But then my eyes met yours. You were standing in your loft, looking like a damn goddess of light. You cut through the darkness that surrounded me so easily, so effortlessly. Staring into your eyes, I felt like I could breathe again in a place that was slowly suffocating me.”

My eyes widen, my own breaths turning choppy at his admission.

“I knew the moment you came down the stairs from your loft that you were the magic I felt. It was pulsating around you, around the tower, so strongly that I nearly fell to my knees in your presence. It was then that I realized King Dolian had lied about you. You weren’t some grief-stricken recluse obscuring herself from the outside world. You were beautiful and glowing and magnificent in every sense, and that asshole was hiding you,” he growls. “He hid you and did gods knows what else to you because, even if he didn’t know you had magic, he sure as fuck knew you were special. I could tell you that I decided to get to know you purely because I needed to figure out how you had magic or if you were a threat, but that would be a lie. I could say that my feelings for you slowly morphed over time, when our visits became more frequent, but that would also be a lie.”

My brows furrow together while my brain tries to play catch-up to everything he is saying.

“It was the moment you called out King Dolian for what he was that I knew—I fucking knew —that you were going to change everything,” he says, bringing a hand to his chest and rubbing right above his heart.

I replay our first encounter in my mind, the memory surfacing easily. I had snarked that King Dolian liked to make up lies about me and then had panicked at my words, at the frank way I had spoken them in front of a stranger that I thought was bound to serve the king. But Nox had just smiled broadly at me. A smile that was, and still is, beautiful and devastating.

“Visiting you, getting to know you, falling in love with you — It was never about completing my mission. Looking back, I think I knew that very first day that I was drawn to you , called to you, even if I didn’t understand why. It may have been your magic that beckoned me to that tower, Sunshine, but it was you —just as you are, magic aside—that kept me coming back. You took everything that I thought I was and tore it to shreds. You did it with the way you looked at me like I truly mattered. You did it with the brief moments I would get a smile or, gods, a fucking laugh. It’s like time stood still when your bravery peeked out from under the massive rock of grief you were living under.” Nox’s breath stutters, his fingers clenching on his knees as his eyes grow glassy. “I had the answer I was searching for, but I didn’t realize that the question had changed until much later, and I was absolutely terrified by that. Terrified to lose that feeling of being home despite being so far away from the only one I had ever known. Terrified of losing the woman who had ushered in this freedom I was so desperate for.”

Tears trail down my cheeks as his words dismantle any argument I might have had against them. They completely obliterate any doubt I had lingering that perhaps I really was nothing more than a means to an end.

His voice is rough, and it draws me in until our faces are only a few inches apart as he speaks. “I need you to understand that nothing and no one is more important to me than you. Not my title, not my crown, and not even this kingdom full of people I would have died for four months ago. You can be angry with me. Fuck, I expect you to be. I want you to be angry, but don’t question my love for you because, despite everything else, it is the one thing that has always remained true.”

My eyes close as his hand cups the side of my face, his thumb gently wiping away my tears.

He takes a deep breath, adding, “And it always will.”