Page 9 of The Crown of Moonlight

I fall.Pain explodes through my skull.Breath is ripped from me, and my lungs won’t draw more in.

Something—someone—heavy lands across my hips.The Ever.His weight is a weapon, keeping me from moving.Then he shoves my hands down and pins them beneath his knees.

I kick and buck my hips.Try to summon enough momentum to push him off.

He’s weak, I know he is, yet I can’t dislodge him.

The wounded chest I treated and wrapped so carefully rises and falls in short, ragged breaths.His jaw clenches as he stares down at me, honey-gold eyes burning feverishly.He braces his hand beside my head.The scent of him cuts through pine and damp earth—sweat and sweet, ironless blood, and that odd spent-lightning smell.

“Where.Are.They?”he growls.The words are torn from somewhere deeper than fury, and he leans down, his mouth inches from my face.

The fear doesn’t hit all at once.It trickles in.

My head swims from the fall, pain pulsing in time with my heart.But it’s the weight of him, the feel of him, close enough to press into the hollow of my pelvis…That’s what breaks me open.

Because I’m more than afraid, I’m aware—and that has nothing to do with what I want.It’s my body betraying me in the most brutal way it can.

Awareness turns to terror, and I remember the stories.I remember what they say about the women and men the Evers used to steal.The Ever-touched.I know the nursery rhymes we heard as children.

Don’t give them your name,

Don’t sup at their table,

They’ll feast on your heart,

Escape while you’re able.

The stories say Everfolk can muddle your mind until nothing else matters.Until your thoughts aren’t your own and your body aches to please them, to serve them.Until you’d steal, lie, and betray everyone you love for one more taste.

They say the craving starts like this: the heat of skin, the pounding blood, that helpless flush of want you do not choose.

This is how it begins.Helplessness.Confusion.Hunger.

Shame for something outside your control.

And now, pinned beneath the Ever, gasping, heart hammering, aware of the way he looks at me, I begin to understand.

Given his wound and the danger he poses as a Rider, I’d forgotten that fundamentally the Ever is still an Ever.

The real fear isn’t that he’ll kill me.It’s what’s in the stories, the fear that he’ll do things that make me want him so much that I will wish that I was dead.

The thought renews my strength.

I twist under him and flex every muscle to throw him off.

He leans even closer, so close I can taste the sweetness of his breath as it comes in ragged, uneven gusts.

“Where are the things you stole?”he demands again.“My ring and sword.The damned letter from General Mora.”

A twig snaps somewhere, and I want to scream for help, but the words won’t form in my throat, and I know no one is coming to save me.There’s no one left at the keep who’d come out to search for me, not yet.

The Ever’s forearm shifts to press against my throat.Not to crush it, just enough pressure to make me feel the threat.The choice.

“Don’t make me ask again,” he says, low and cold.“You will regret it.”

The menace is there, but there’s also a wavering, desperate note to his voice.

Strands of his silver-gold hair cling to his temples, and his cheeks are flushed with fever.I can use that to my advantage.