Page 18

KYRIE

I t shouldn’t feel good.

Hugging the Sword shouldn’t feel so godsdamned right.

But it does.

I burrow my face back into his shirt, well aware I’m going to leave dirty marks all over his chest, and fully fine with that. Oily stains are the very least he deserves.

A sob tries to tear its way out of my chest, and I fist my hands in the back of his shirt because gods help me?—

He feels like home.

His chest against mine, his arms around me—it all settles me.

“I’m getting you dirty,” I finally say. “I was out riding Mushroom.”

“You could paint me all the colors of the rainbow and I would be better for having been touched by you,” he says.

My heart aches. I want to forgive him. Part of me wants to understand why he wounded me so badly—part of me might already understand it.

The rest of me is so angry and confused that it makes me exhausted to even think about it.

“I’ll show you,” he murmurs, his lips brushing against the top of my head as he speaks. “I can show you. I know my words are hardly enough. Empty promises from a death god who betrayed you.”

His voice turns sardonic, rough—full of self-hatred and regret.

My muscles tense up.

“There was no other way, but what’s done is done, and I will spend the rest of our lives making things right, starting now.”

I squeak as he scoops me up into his arms. “I need to get cleaned up?—”

“And I will be the one doing it for you,” he tells me. There’s a spark of mischief in his eyes that makes my breath catch.

It's that, the edge of humor I see in his smile, more than anything, more than how right he feels against my body, that finds me nodding my head in quiet agreement.

If he wants to spoil me rotten to prove that he’s sorry, then that’s on him.

I wouldn’t be me if I were above a little bribery, after all.

Besides, it doesn’t mean I trust him.

It just means I have a taste for luxury and being waited on hand and foot.

That’s all.