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KYRIE

I can’t see.

For a panicked second, I think I’ve died again. I sink onto the floor, the stones cold against my hands, the heat from the dragon gone, and I take heart in the fact that I am still inside my body, that I’m not dreaming.

That I wasn’t dreaming.

Han was real.

I don’t remember exactly how I got down here, but that happened.

I crawl forward in the dark, hearing footsteps behind me, until my fingers close around a sharp oblong object. It’s hot enough that holding it stings.

The smell of sulfur clings to the scale, as well as a smoky scent that strangely reminds me of roast chicken.

Of all the things for a dragon scale to remind me of, roast chicken is where my mind lands.

Typical.

My stomach growls, and I’m half-surprised that it doesn’t make the floor shake the way the dragon did.

By Sola’s hairy left arm mole, I can’t believe I was just talking to a dragon. I’m holding a dragon scale.

He said…

“Kyrie,” Hrakan says, kneeling next to me.

“Hairball,” I answer.

To my surprise, he wraps his arms around me, holding me tightly, his breath coming out hot and shaky against my ear. “You can call me whatever the fuck you want, Kyrie, but don’t scare me like that again.”

“The dragon wasn’t going to hurt me.” I blink, barely registering his features in the darkness.

“That’s not what I meant, Kyrie.” He rubs the pad of his thumb over my cheekbone, and my breath catches. I almost lean into the gesture—almost.

But I make myself still.

He hurt me.

“What did you mean? I’m not allowed to get out of your bed when we’re naked? What other high-handedness would you like to?—”

“I’ll do anything you want, even let you leave, but you don’t get to give up. It’s been a week. A week of you barely eating, barely drawing breath. I bathed you, I had to, I’m sorry.” His voice breaks, and I don’t need to see his face to know it would shatter what’s left of my heart. “I couldn’t stand the thought of you filthy when I could take care of you.”

“A week?” I repeat, finally glomming onto what he’s said. “A week.”

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s get you some food. If you want to talk to me, call me Hairball, call me a fucking piece of dogshit, then do it, Kyrie. You can call me anything, if it keeps you talking.”

“To think all I had to do to get you to talk to me when I broke you out of prison was ignore you.” It’s a joke, but it doesn’t land, not for either of us.

I sway as I stand, weak from apparently a week of barely eating.

“May I help you?” His voice is rough, but the cautiousness I hear catches me by surprise.

I nod. “Please.”

He loops an arm around my waist, and I lean against him, whatever force propelled me down here leaving me tired without it. Gently, so gently, he guides me back to the stairs, where torches still light a path.

“My name wasn’t always Hrakan,” he says gruffly.

I eye the stone stairs, barely remembering walking down them and at a loss for how I’m going to navigate them now. “Oh?”

He grunts, and I roll my eyes reflexively.

“Back to not using our words, are we, Hairball?”

He doesn’t answer, so I grunt in response to my own question. His laughter is a warm gust against my neck.

“My mother called me Arek. Everyone did, until I was one of the last.”

“Arek,” I repeat, for lack of anything else to say.

“It sounds good on your lips, my love. I’m going to carry you up these.” He waves a hand at the staircase, and I can’t say I blame him because it would take me twenty years to climb them. “If that’s alright with you.”

I blink at him, dazzled by the torchlight and by this shift in reality—dazzled by him, so beautiful and fierce.

It hurts to look at him, it hurts to hear him call me his love.

I’m too tired to argue, too tired to do anything but nod, and I close my eyes tightly as he lifts me effortlessly.

He keeps talking, and I don’t know what to do with it, with myself, this version of him that wants me in his life, that isn’t pushing me away.

“Tell me how to make it up to you. Tell me how to make it right.”

He falls silent, and I don’t know what to tell him. I don’t know how he can fix it.

“You can’t fix me,” I say. “I’m not a doll that needs repairing.” It doesn’t come out mean, or snarky, or anything but matter-of-fact, and so, so tired.

“Listen to me, Kyrie, you are not broken. You are not now, and you never have been.” This, through gritted teeth, his footfalls loud in the circular stairwell.

My eyes flutter open, and I hate that I want to believe him.

I hate that I’m weak enough that I want to forgive him, too.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” It comes out a croak, and I force back the tears that threaten.

I don’t have to elaborate, he knows what I mean.

“I couldn’t tell you, Kyrie. I couldn’t, gods damn it, but I tried to, Kyrie. I tried to stay away from you, tried to warn you off from me, but you… We are fated. There was nothing I could do.”

“You could have told me the truth.” It’s nothing more than a whisper, but he flinches like I’ve struck him.

“Kyrie, you and I were prophesized. I wish things had been different, gods, I wish I were different, I wish I were the sort of man you deserved at all. You had to fall in love with me for us to have any chance at a future. Be honest, would you have let yourself fall if you knew I—” His voice breaks, and I can feel the fight fading from me.

I shouldn’t want to comfort him. I shouldn’t want to kiss him.

But the longer I watch the furrows on his forehead deepen, the more I want to smooth them away.

The pull towards him is undeniable, especially now that I’m in his arms—and it’s not just physical. The pain in his words, in his eyes—I can feel it plainly, a sympathetic ache in my heart.

“I did what I had to do to save you, to save a future with you, a future without Sola,” he finally continues, not even close to out of breath despite the climb. “You were dying, Kyrie. If I hadn’t done what I did?—”

“Killed me, you mean,” I supply.

He winces. “If I hadn’t sacrificed you and brought you back as Fae, you would have died from the chalice’s curse. You had to love me for me to be able to hold onto your soul while I changed your?—”

“My body,” I finish for him, since he’s clearly having trouble with describing his very actions.

“Do you hate me for saving you?” he asks. “Will you always hate me?”

“You broke my trust. You took my love for you and used it to make me immortal without even bothering to tell me what you planned.” I pause, wetting my lips, placing a hand on my growling stomach. “I still don’t understand what that has to do with Sola because no one has bothered to inform me. Even the dragon?—”

It hits me again then, the absolute, sheer awe of the reality of a dragon. I run my fingers over the golden scale in my hand.

“The dragon wants the same thing I do, and he compelled you to bind to him without giving you a chance. And yet you bear him no ill will.”

It’s the wrong thing to say, and my temper flares as we emerge into the room full of dragons past.

“He didn’t fuck me. He didn’t make me fall in love with him only to drive a dagger into my heart.” I squirm, trying to get out of his arms. “I can walk.”

“No. I’m not letting you go again. I’m not putting either one of us through another week like what just happened.”

All the fight goes out of me, just like that.

The pain is clear in his voice, etching across my skin and seeping into my bones.

“I don’t want to hate you,” I say in a soft voice. “I don’t want to be miserable for the rest of whatever life this is.”

His gaze darts from where he’s stonily looking ahead to my face and back again.

“You have to tell me everything,” I add.

“I will. I will. Let’s get you some food, and I will tell you everything, Kyrie. I swear it.” Something softens in his face, the lines of his mouth not so tight, and my heart eases in response.

I still love him.

And I might hate myself for that the most.