Page 10

I take Quin’s hand and slink through backstreets, bypassing the square to the dueller’s bridge. We stop in the middle and stare at the glistening glacier as a unit of stormblades marches at our backs.

“You’re shuddering,” Quin murmurs.

“You might be recognised.”

“I’m in disguise.”

I glance at Quin and pay more attention to his outfit.

He’s wearing coarse fabrics of earthy colours, and plain vambraces, and a thick leather belt around a hide vest. His boots aren’t his usual, polished ones.

These have faint rune scratches on them.

He’s dressed as if he comes from the Skeldar countryside.

But what good are clothes when he flaunts his chiselled face like that?

“I’ve seen better disguises on you. I see right through this one.”

Quin faces me, a pivot that feels like a wall of heat pressing towards me.

Ice is all around us, yet in this moment, I feel it will all melt into a gushing river and snatch us along with it.

His gaze fuses with mine and he leans forward without so much as a smile, as if he wants me to be certain how serious he is.

As if he wants me to feel it to my soul. “As I saw right through yours.”

My sack slips down my arm and swings to my front. I cradle the runes between us, holding his gaze, noting its slight flicker. I can see the memory that swims to the surface. I see it and experience it again, like I did inside the dromveske the first time.

It’s a cold night and Quin is a captive, sitting in a Skeldar cage, his hair already hacked off. His escort moves him relentlessly along the lantern-lit main street.

When I go through this door, the moment I see the moving cage I’m racing after it. With an angry shout that the stormblades don’t hear, I yank open the door and crawl into the small space.

I slide before Quin, swallowing hard. I know the state of his back, his chest. Know he must’ve been in pain everywhere.

So even though he can’t feel it, even though it’s only a memory, I carefully touch his legs, shaking to comfort him while he pretends to be stoic, while he holds his chin up and stares towards the lights of the temple in the distance.

The cage shudders over cobbled stone and stops suddenly.

Stormblades double-check it’s securely locked and scoff as they head into the inn for a gloating drink.

I spy the one who’ll soon splutter out his story about the Lumin king’s capture.

I remember Chaos on this night. He’s sitting with his aunt on the second storey. Just above us.

If Chaos only knew.

My breath fogs in the cold night, wisping around Quin’s jaw. I clutch his knees. “Quintus...”

He tilts his head up suddenly, as if something’s caught his eye, and I follow to the flash of something small falling.

It clatters against an overhead bar and drops onto Quin’s outstretched hand.

His fingers curl around the object too quickly and I shuffle closer, peering along with Quin as he opens his hand.

A rush gravity has me grabbing a bar for support.

There’s a pebble in Quin’s hand. A golden one with a carved rune.

It’s the one I tossed over the balcony.

The rune of finding one’s . . .

I stare as Quin inspects the small stone. I close my eyes as he slips it into the folds of his ruined cloak.

I tremble as he hums.

I tremble again as I come out of the memory and continue to hold Quin’s gaze.

We’re alone on the bridge, the shelves of ice around us like sparkling curtains dropped from the heavens.

It’s only him and me and all the shared memories of his dromveske.

I can see his breath and my own as we relive them all as if they’re playing out between us.

I’m his horse; we’re helping patients under the bridge; we’re saving a cat; he’s pinned my sleeve with an arrow; he’s over the cliff, not letting go; he’s almost touching my sleeping face in the luminarium; he’s catching me in his rowboat; he’s fending off lovelight suitors; he’s trusting me to provide a cure.

He’s leaving for a long, long time . . .

I drop the bag of runes. Slowly, I lift the pads of my fingers to his cheek and skate them along his smooth skin, into his loosening hair. I found him again. Maskios.

He shuts his eyes and swallows thickly.

“You finally let me see the real you.”

His cane clatters to the ground and he hauls me against his chest, soft winds curling around us; he has no control over them.

I wrap my arms around his neck, bury my face against his throat and those braids amongst his hair. How full I feel. A last stolen moment. The ache can come tomorrow, but it’s not tomorrow now. Now, I’m on top of those frozen waterfalls, about to fall over them. A giddying rush; an emboldening one.

I laugh and grab a fistful of Quin’s shirt, pulling his face down.

Right from the start, he’s been helping me.

Not just the cliffs. Not just physically.

On a deeper level. I look up at him. “Whenever I veered off my path, you steered me back. Right from the start, right through, you’ve been helping the real me. ”

Quin cups my face and holds my gaze steady. Without warning, his nose becomes a whisper along mine as he sharply and playfully nips at my lips. “We’ve been helping one another .”

I’m frozen. My heart is pounding where his lips pinched mine.

Every sense has shifted to that one throbbing point.

My gaze sharpens along with my breath. Quin is raising an eyebrow, daring me to be surprised.

And I feel the coiling of his quiet goading.

It’s pulling so tight. I move my fingers from my lips and curl them around his nape.

I press him closer. I whisper, “I missed you—”

We collide in a warm gust that whips around us, our hair twirling dramatically as his lips land on mine. His hands are everywhere, on my shoulders, my arms, sweeping down to my hips.

I hit the side of the bridge. He urges me onto the ledge. His lips are soft and careful, eager and hard; they’re refusing to release mine. No, mine are refusing to be released. My arms are curled tight around his neck. I’m holding onto him like I once held his hand, with that ferocious desperation.

I feel the terrible pain of those days when he wouldn’t wake up.

I grip tighter.

Something warm and bright begins to bubble inside my chest. It feels like the moment he woke; it feels like the moment of mutual knowing we shared in the coffin; like the moment I saw my soldad under the violet oak.

It feels like I’m falling from the tops of these waterfalls over and over.

Sharp thrills swoop through my body and pool low in my stomach.

The bubbling brightness is warm, almost too warm.

Each scrape and press of his lips makes the brightness expand.

It wants to burst out of me; it’s aching to be released .

I want to laugh it out into a covetous kiss, and I want to yell.

But . . .

My hands clench around Quin and I shut my mouth firmly. This... this can’t come out. This moment is meant to be intimate and fond and fleeting . Not something that would make him feel guilty. Not something he’d regret .

“What’s the matter?” Quin asks, pebbling kisses up my throat.

I turn my head to face him.

“Magic,” I murmur on a swallow. “It’ll give us away.”

He doesn’t stop kissing me, but the winds cease and his balance wavers until he’s leaning against me. I steady him and grab a handful of loose locks and braids as I steer him into a softer kiss. “Do you hurt?”

“Didn’t you warn me I was in a lot of trouble?”

I laugh, and he laughs, and between our laughs the heavy weight of reaching the end lingers.

We stare at each other. Each shift apart adds to the sting behind my eyes. He scoops up his cane, leans on it, looks towards the castle in the distance.

His mother . . .

“He won’t let her go willingly,” I croak.

“I have a plan.” He meets my eyes. “Tomorrow at the wedding, be sure to act like you don’t know us. Tell Mother, too.”

“Us?”

“Me, and Nicostratus.”

I swallow thickly. “He’s here? ”

“Yes,” he says and glares into the hills. “To save you.”

“You won’t save me?” it slips out, and at the flicker in his jaw and his briefly shutting eyes, I wish I could claw the question back.

Quin looks at me, and the change is swift and painful. The warmth of his eyes cools and his jaw stiffens, and the hardened facade of the outcast king returns. “There are other things I must do.”