He sets Sosch aside. I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but he becomes even more pale. I’m not even sure he’s breathing until he finally draws in a long, deep breath.
Then something goes wrong. Instead of relief or elation, fury takes over Aren’s expression. He curses as he draws his sword, and that’s when I realize my mistake. The fae don’t believe in ghosts; they believe in illusions.
Shit.
He’s on me before I can explain, grabbing the front of my shirt in his fist. If he was in his right mind, he’d realize that touching me would break an illusion, but he’s in a blind rage right now. He’s not listening to me.
Instead of trying to pull away, I move toward him, manage to lay my hand on the side of his neck. Thank God, my chaos lusters react instantly. I see the spark of heat in his eyes. He goes still.
“McKenzie?” His voice breaks. Confusion moves through his eyes. He saw me go over the cliff. He’s believed I was dead for almost forty-eight hours.
“I’m not an illusion,” I say.
He touches my face. Tenderly. Tentatively.
“McKenzie. Sidhe, I thought…”
He doesn’t finish that sentence. Instead, he kisses me with a fierceness that takes my breath away, murmuring my name over and over and over again. His hands run down my shoulders, down my arms. They rest on my hips, tighten, then one splays across the center of my back, all as if he’s still not sure I’m here. I cup the back of his neck and kiss him harder, proving I’m not a dream.
I want to keep kissing him, keep touching him, but Aren presses his lips against mine one last time then takes a half step back. He looks at me, almost as if he thinks his hands are deceiving him. He needs to prove I’m alive with his eyes now, so he takes me in. The relief I was searching for earlier reaches his gaze. It doesn’t completely chase away the shadows of his pain, though.
“I saw you at the edge of the cliff,” I tell him. “I heard you scream my name, and it killed me.” I loop my arms around him, pull him close again so I can rest my head against his shoulder. He’s warm and deliciously solid. “I tried to get your attention, but Tylan had me. He…”
I lift my head. “He took me to the remnants’ camp. It’s in the Corrist Mountains.” I draw in a breath to tell him more. “I told Naito—Paige is there. A fae named—”
“No, shhh.” He lightly touches a finger to my lips. “Unless the remnants are going to attack the palace in the next hour, I don’t want to hear a report. You’re always putting the Realm before yourself. It stops now.”
With that, he scoops me into his arms. It’s sudden and unexpected, but I’m holding on to him instinctively. He climbs the rest of the steps and takes me to my room.
To my bathroom. He kicks on a lever, and water begins to fill the round, tiled tub. When Aren sets me on my feet, I steady myself by holding on to the black pipe that travels up into the ceiling. A reservoir of water is up there. A palace employee fills it every time it’s drained.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Aren says, studying me, “but you look like you’ve crossed the Barren.”
Crossing the Barren, a stretch of land in the Realm where no fae can fissure, is an idiom that basically means I look like shit, and damn it, I do. Dirt is packed under my fingernails, the sleeves of my gray shirt are torn and streaked with brown and black, and, when the edarratae flash across my skin, they look dim under the thick layer of grime. I don’t want to think about what my hair must look like.
“God, no wonder you tried to kill me.” I take my hands off him, step away.
He chuckles and pulls me back. “I wasn’t in my right mind. Even like this, I want you.”
A million chaos lusters somersault in my stomach, and when he kisses me this time, I’m undone. Nothing matters but him and us and this, the way he makes me feel like I’m everything to him. Sometime in the last month, he’s become everything to me.
He pulls my shirt over my head, cups my face between his hands, and drinks me in. Edarratae leap from me to him in excited, frenzied bursts, and I decide then that I’m never letting him go.
“I never told you,” Aren whispers against my neck. “How difficult it was.” He plants a kiss on my bare shoulder, just to the right of my bra strap. “Not to touch you in Cleveland.”
Cleveland? Too many thoughts are spinning through my head, too many sensations driving through my body for me to make sense of his words.
“You scared me then.” His hands are between us, unbuttoning my pants. “I wasn’t sure you’d wake up until I dropped you into the tub.”
“Ohh.” I mean that “oh” to be silent, but just when I realize he’s referring to the safe house he took me to after Germany, he pulls my earlobe between his teeth. My entire body turns molten.
I feel him smiling against my neck, and I fall for him even more. I didn’t think that was possible, but making him happy makes me happy, and all I want to do is make him smile.
Make him smile and moan and tremble when I touch him.
That’s what he does when I start unbuckling his weapons belt. Then, he places his left hand over mine. His right touches my cheek.
“Again, don’t take this the wrong way,” he says, his voice sounding strained. “But I’m going to walk out of here.”
The way he slides my pants over my hips suggests differently. I step out of my shoes and let him finish stripping me down to just my bra and undies. He’s kneeling in front of me long enough that I have to run my hand through his already disheveled hair. I love how untamed it is, how untamed he is.
“Aren,” I say. I mean to make his name an encouragement, to let him know that this is okay, that I’m not going to stop him, I want him, but my voice comes out just as strained as his, and when he runs his hands up my thighs, I can’t manage any more words. My muscles quiver. I’m barely able to stay on my feet.
But then, he straightens, and, quickly, he picks me up and sets me in the tub.
I gasp when the ice-cold water bites at my calves.
“Sidhe,” he mutters. “Sorry.”
Keeping one hand on my hip, he bends down to submerge his other hand beneath the water’s surface. It warms immediately.
I raise an eyebrow when he straightens, then say, “That’s one way to cool me off.”
He laughs at that, and his smile and the brightness in his silver eyes makes my heart skip.
“Yeah, I…” He clears his throat, releases my hip. “Will you be okay? I’d stay and help, but I’d have to touch you, and if I touch you one more second…I think you need rest more than you need me right now.”
That’s extremely debatable.
“I’ll bring you something to eat.”
Or maybe he’s right. Now that he’s brought up the idea, my stomach decides to remind me I haven’t eaten anything in almost two days. And it’s probably not a bad idea to rest before I…before we…
God, I really want to be with him.
He gives me one of his crooked half grins, and his gaze and his posture tell me just how difficult it is for him to walk away.
And that’s one more thing I love about him I realize as he’s closing the bathroom door. I love that he needs me as much as I need him. Kyol always made leaving me look easy…
Kyol.
I almost slip in the tub.
He’s the garistyn, the kingkiller. I don’t think Tylan was lying when he said that’s one of the reasons the high nobles aren’t approving Lena. Whatever their opinion was of Atroth, they aren’t happy he was killed. I just never realized how unhappy they were.
With shaking hands, I strip off my undergarments. I don’t know if the shaking is because I’m weak and hungry or if it’s because I’m afraid. I try to convince myself that Kyol will be okay. Lena needs him. She has to protect him, but I know him too well. He’s too damn noble to let this go on for long. He’ll turn himself in because it’s what’s best for the Realm and because he blames himself for not being able to find a way to save his king.