Page 28

H ellebore woke up to a soft weight on her chest. She blinked and the sunlight cleared for her to see she was in Taiyo’s room—really their room, considering how she hadn’t slept a night in hers for months.

The weight was a hand resting over her heart. She closed her eyes. Her heartbeat was steady, normal. She was alive.

She opened them again. And her hands… her arms…

They were like tattoos, stretching up from her palm to her elbow, the design of Sunrise Irises across them. A hum settled under her skin.

She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she felt… different. Warm, but not the same warm that came from being curled up against a Sun Elf. It was coming from inside.

She knew without looking who the hand on her chest belonged to, and she was correct; her husband was lying beside her, measuring her heartbeat with his palm like she had done so many nights.

His chest was rising and falling. He was alive. She was alive.

Hellebore didn’t understand.

Her blood certainly didn’t feel like it was black sludge. Her heart wasn’t struggling to pump it with every breath.

Taiyo stirred as she sat up straighter. She could see his side was rebandaged, and within a split second, she was engulfed by him again, clutching her to himself before he pulled back and took her face in his hands. “Hellebore, talk to me, how do you feel? Are you alright?”

“Well, I’m not dead, so I feel better than if I was.” Hellebore glanced down at her arms before looking back at him. At some point, she’d been changed out of her destroyed nightgown, cleaned up, and put in a new one. She assumed by Phoebe and Elaine. “By the way, how am I not dead?”

His grip on her tightened as his face fell, but he was still ridiculously gentle with her. “I am so furious with you.”

Her lips twitched. “Can you be furious with me tomorrow?”

He stared at her for a moment before his lips twitched as well as she grinned at him. “You’re alive because I was able to use the iris the guards brought to make a connection with you, the way I did with the irises to try and stop the rot. Thankfully, because you are much smaller than the entire land of Iubar, it worked. I was able to pour enough magic into you to connect my magic to your life. It was enough for me to be able to cleanse without killing myself.”

“And these?” Hellebore held her hand up.

“When the healers reached us after the eclipse, they told me it was from the magic now in your blood; the other iris is in mine. That’s what connects us.”

“Connects us how?” Hellebore furrowed her brow. She’d heard of a ritual connecting an elf and a human, or an elf with human blood like the Star Elves did for their comet, but this didn’t seem to be the same thing. “I’m not going to start hearing your thoughts or anything?”

“No, you won’t.” Taiyo gave her a soft smile. “Our very lives are connected. You have a lengthened lifespan now. We’ll go together.”

Well, that was unexpected.

“So… I take it that means no second marriage for you?” Hellebore laughed.

“I never wanted one. Since I married you, you are the only wife I want.” Taiyo’s thumbs brushed over her cheeks, bringing her eyes back up to his. “I’m going to need you to explain yourself to me. Why did you sacrifice yourself to save my life? And don’t give me any nonsense about me being your king.”

Heat flooded her cheeks and she couldn’t stand to look at the intensity in his eyes, but neither did she pull away. “I thought I already did.”

“Tell me again.”

She dropped her hand to his heart, brushing her fingers over his skin. His heartbeat rose to meet her fingertips like that’s what it was made for.

She whispered, “I’ve never liked why. I always preferred how. But in this case, where is the more pertinent question. You always asked me where. Ask me again.”

“Where have you hidden your heart?”

She looked up, palm flattening against his heart. “It’s right here. You’re my heart.”

His hands slid to cradle the back of her head.

She shrugged. “I couldn’t… I couldn’t—” Her voice broke as the image of him lying on the ground, dying came rushing back. “Sorry, I don’t—This isn’t—I’m not—”

He let out a soft hushing sound as his fingers tangled in her hair. “Sunshine, you know my heart is yours. Tell me plainly, is yours mine?”

She broke, breathing out, “Yes.”

Then he was kissing her and she kissed him back. She murmured to him, unable to stop herself, “I love you. I’m sorry. That’s why. I love you. And I couldn’t do this without you. I didn’t want to do it without you. I couldn’t bear for you to leave me.”

“Don’t apologize. Just say it. Again and again, say it until you lose your voice, and when you lose your voice, scream it just by kissing me until there is nothing else, and when you can kiss me no longer and you are too tired to even lift your arms to hold me, I will hold you and listen to your heartbeat and I will hear your heart whisper in every steady beat.”

“I will—” Hellebore kissed him again and again as his hands grabbed her waist. “I love you. I don’t know how I went so long hiding from it, but no more. Don’t let me go.”

“Oh, Hellebore, if I was able to let you go, I would have months ago, but I cannot. My alchemist, my wife, my heart… You do not know how long and how often I have dreamed of this.”

Hellebore was out of words.

All she could do was prove to her husband how much she loved him with every beat of her full, thriving heart.