Page 53

T he panic that filled Kael when Aisling began to turn away was visceral and undeniable.

It had taken him this long to find the courage to address this, all of this, with her.

Now, he was letting the moment slip through his fingers, every verbal misstep another painful crack through his chest. He could see it happening before his eyes as though he were watching someone else try and fail to put into words all the things that he carried. The things Aisling needed to hear.

He much preferred sword fighting: each step sure, each blow and parry very nearly a choreographed dance. If she stepped to the right, he knew where to move his feet. If she lunged, he knew how to shift his weight. A call, a response; an action, a reaction.

He’d rather have been in battle.

Damage from a sword, Kael could sustain.

But Aisling had no idea the potential lethality of her responses, her reactions.

If she wanted to, she could cut him down right that moment with a swiftness that rivaled any skilled warrior with a sharp blade or true arrow.

And, if he were honest with himself, she had every right to.

Except she hadn’t yet. She was still there, still listening. He had this chance now, and he knew it would be his last. As on the battlefield, he had to make a final stand, and it had to count.

Kael smoothed his thumb over Aisling’s wrist where her pulse was racing just as fast as his own.

He hoped she wouldn’t notice the way his fingers trembled against her.

She didn’t yield to his touch. In any other instance, he’d have enjoyed the impatient purse of her lips and the small furrow between her brows.

He might have even teased her for it. If he could just kiss those lips, could somehow make her feel what he was feeling rather than having to say it all out loud, she’d understand.

This would have been an opportune moment for her to exercise her affinity.

Aisling shifted her arm in his grasp. He was losing her.

“I lied to you,” he said quickly.

She sighed. Looked away. Ground her teeth. “You didn’t lie.”

“I did not tell you the truth.” Maybe he hadn’t lied outright—but if she’d asked him, if she’d somehow suspected his true intentions and had demanded he tell her everything, he would have done so without hesitation.

She would have never let him do what needed to be done if he’d told her the truth of it.

She shrugged.

A surge of fear shot through him at her wordless dismissal. He was losing her. “Aisling.”

“What is it?” Her gaze was still trained on the ground, on the trees, on the forest beyond. On anything but Kael.

“Look at me.” He waited until she did, but her eyes were blank, like she was looking through him. Past him. He was losing her. “No, really look. Please.”

Still holding her wrist in one hand, he raised his other to grasp her chin. His grip was gentle, yet still firm enough to hold her attention. Finally, she looked at him— really looked at him—and the pain that overtook that blank expression when she did cut him to his core and left him breathless.

In an instant, Kael realized then the true depth of his selfishness: he’d seen her pain selfishly, too.

He’d been so singularly focused on how he felt when she pushed him away, on how much it hurt him to watch her hurt.

He had thought only of how holding her again would soothe the ache in his chest or how hearing her speak would fill the void-like silence in his head.

He’d reacted with anger when she told him what little she could manage about the trials, not because of what she had gone through, but because he hadn’t been there to protect her when he felt he should have.

Shame seared in his gut, hot as fire. It scorched his lungs, his throat; it burned in his eyes. It took him a moment before he was able to control his speech again.

“I lied to you,” Kael repeated, all of his effort now concentrated on keeping his voice steady. “And I am sorry.”

He watched her, the way she looked up at him, her mosaic eyes slowly scanning his face as though she were searching for something.

He felt suddenly, overwhelmingly exposed, like his every unfettered emotion and unspoken thought was written there plainly.

Like she could see straight into the core of that tangled mess of feelings he held for her.

It terrified him. Except this time, instead of raising up the wall to mask it as he was so practiced in doing, Kael let it all linger there, unguarded. Let Aisling read his face like a book.

“I was wrong for it. For that; for so many things. I see now what it has cost you, and I hate myself for it. I hate that I hurt you, and I hate that I broke something between us that I don’t know how to fix.

” He took a ragged, shuddering breath. “But I will spend the rest of eternity attempting to do so, if you’ll allow it. ”

“I don’t know how to let go of what you made me do,” she choked out.

A tear slid down her cheek and it brought him to his knees before her.

“I would not ask you to. Hold onto it, if you must. Just hold onto me, too,” Kael begged.

And then without warning, the words he’d never allowed himself to express, rarely even allowed himself to think, were on his lips and he was speaking them into being: “I love you. I regret not saying it sooner, and I regret that everything I have done up until this point has made you believe otherwise.”

A broken sob racked Aisling’s body and Kael caught her other hand before she could raise it to cover her face.

Holding both of her hands between them now, he squeezed gently as he looked up at her through tears of his own.

Now that he’d started, he couldn’t stop.

He needed her to know everything he felt for her, everything she meant to him.

It would be his final, and possibly greatest, act of selfishness.

“From the very first moment I knew you, Aisling, my heart was no longer my own. You have brought it back to life twice, now. I owe you everything. My life, everything. It is yours. Do you hear me?”

Tears now streaming down her face, she shook her head.

“Then listen, and I will repeat it once more. My name is yours—do you understand what that means?” Before she could answer, he continued forcefully: “My will is yours, my heart is yours. All that I am—every broken piece and sharp edge, every monstrous thought and every dark wish and every hope to be better, kinder, for you—is yours. If you’ll have me. ”

Kael’s entire body, his entire being, was electrified by the force of his confession as though a lightning storm was raging in his chest. He hardly noticed the tears that had begun falling down his cheeks, or how tightly he was now gripping Aisling’s hands. She was squeezing his just as hard.

“I don't want to miss you anymore.” Aisling’s voice was lost to another wrenching sob.

Kael shifted nearer, closing the space between them with a deliberateness he hoped she wouldn’t interpret as hesitation.

When he moved one hand to her hip, it was instinctive: meant to steady her, but it grounded him just as well.

He could feel her shaking beneath his touch, her uneven gasps hitching with every inhale, and it only made him hold onto her more firmly.

“Everything you are feels like home to me,” he whispered reverently. “And I’ve missed you terribly.”

Kael shifted his weight back and pressed gently on Aisling’s hip, urging her down. And she let him—to his relief, to his almost profound wonder, she let him. He guided her into his lap and instead of stiffening or pushing or fighting, she folded into his arms and buried herself into his chest.

He held her so relentlessly he thought for a moment he might break her, but that thought alone wasn’t enough to make him ease his grip.

She clung to him, too, almost just as fiercely.

And at last, at last, that choking blackness that had hardened in his lungs was being expelled with every heaving breath, being melted by every hot tear that both of them shed.

He could breathe again. He had her—his Aisling, his Red Woman. He could breathe again.

He kept her pressed close against him, so that he could hardly tell where he ended and she began. With his cheek against the crown of her head and his fingers woven into her hair, he whispered those precious words over and over: “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

She didn’t have to speak to say it back. When she finally raised her head to look at him, he could see it in her red-rimmed eyes and tear-soaked face. The way she looked at him was enough to settle him; he thought for a moment that he might cease to exist entirely outside of her gaze.

And when her lips met his, he could feel it, too.

He could feel every bit of it—of her —caressing and soothing and mending and easing all those ancient, vicious parts of him that he’d never learned to love on his own.

She dug her fingers into him as if she wanted to reach inside him, as if in doing so she could pull out all that darkness herself with her bare hands.

If anyone could, it would be Aisling. There was no emptiness with her in his arms, no fear or hate or anger.

There was only this. There was only them .

Kael inhaled deeply, breathing in her scent as she kissed him again with renewed fervor.

It was as intoxicating as it was calming; it was everything he remembered it to be and everything he’d so longed for even without realizing.

It was his homecoming. He sank deeper into the kiss, his grip still firm enough to anchor himself to this moment, to this reality, because a part of him was terrified it might slip away.

That maybe Yalde had found a new form of torture: instead of holding him in his darkest fantasies, forcing him to live out a forbidden dream.

But Aisling’s lips were warm and soft and if this was all an illusion it felt so, so real.

Her fingers tangled into Kael’s hair and the pull at its roots sent a shiver coursing through him.

The longing that pooled in his core was a sensation that he couldn’t deny—and had very little desire to.

Kael tilted his head, deepening the kiss, his chest tightening with emotions too immense to name.

She was his sanctuary, and he wanted her to know it. Needed her to know it.

Breaking away just enough to press his forehead to hers, their ragged breaths mingling between them, Kael whispered once more, “I love you, Aisling.”

She drew back a bit further so that she could look straight into his eyes when she said, “Then you need to make me a promise.”

Her statement brought him pause, his heart stuttering at the weight of the word promise . Guilt settled over him once more as he was forced to recognize that he hadn’t been good at keeping promises in the past. But for Aisling, he would change. For Aisling, he would do anything at all.

“Ask whatever you wish of me, and I will swear to it without question.”

“Promise to tell me the truth, always. Even if it hurts.” She paused, then added, “Especially if it hurts.”

“I promise.” He meant it. He’d keep it. This time, things would be different.

Aisling sat up a little straighter; Kael shifted as she adjusted her position in his lap. She wiped her eyes again, then his. He leaned gratefully into her touch.

This time, things would be different.