Burning Glass (Burning Glass, #1)(102)
I moved closer, as close as Anton would allow me. “Do you remember that strength inside me you asked me to find and hold on to? Well, I’ve found it.” I smiled, trying to show him what it felt like. “It’s what makes me most grounded and sure and resilient. It’s my feelings for you, Anton. I don’t doubt them. They give me hope, like I’ve done one good and smart thing in this world by setting my heart on you.”
As he gazed back at me, his brows drew together in anguish. I felt him wanting to believe in my words, but he didn’t know how.
“You’ve lost just as much as I have,” I said. “You’re just as broken. I’m not the only one who needs comforting.”
I yearned to touch him, but I didn’t dare. He sat so rigidly and withdrawn into himself. As I watched him, a pang of loneliness and sorrow lodged in my breast. I couldn’t lose him now, not when I felt with the fullness of my aura that we were meant for each other.
I memorized every plane, curve, and slant of his achingly beautiful face, like I had long ago in the troika. I found the small mole near his eye, the delicate sculpt of his upper lip. And more wonders came to surface. A little freckle along his jaw. A tiny scar above his right cheek. The slightest unevenness of his aristocratic nose. Somehow it felt like I might never see him again, like through the small separation of our bodies, he was already slipping through my fingers like sand.
“You said I was your savior,” I said, “but you won’t let me save you, not truly.”
He shrugged in misery. “I don’t know how to be saved.”
I tucked my knees to my chest as my heart sank. We were at the same impasse as ever, divided by his inability to trust my feelings for him. And perhaps there was more, something deeper Anton didn’t trust about himself.
The light of the candle nearest us wavered as the wick sagged into the last of the melting wax. When at length it sputtered out, I rose and slowly brushed the dust from my dress. “Thank you for tonight,” I said. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.” My insides twisted with guilt and regret. They weren’t mine.
“Wait.” Anton stood. He blew out a shaky breath. “Stay.”
I frowned with uncertainty.
He advanced a step. “I promise I won’t kiss you again.”
I sighed. “I want you to kiss me.”
“Stay.”
I crossed my arms and kept my distance. I wasn’t sure if I had it in me to keep falling for him when he couldn’t commit to fully opening his heart.
“You let me hold you,” he said, “even when it was difficult.” A foreign emotion of timidity seeded within him. “I’d like to allow you the same.” He winced like he wasn’t expressing himself correctly. “That is, I’m asking you.” His shoulders wilted. “I’m trying, Sonya. This is the best I can do.”
I bit my lip.
He searched my eyes. “Stay.”
A breeze pressed against the windowpanes. The gilded walls of the palace creaked. My flimsy barrier against the prince came undone. I walked away, but not to the midnight-blue door. I climbed into his bed. A sliver of moonlight angled across the blankets from a crack in the window curtains. He took a long breath and followed me. We sat opposite each other, me with my legs curled at my side, him with one knee propped up. Then we moved nearer, as if this was the most delicate dance of all, as if we hadn’t already spent the greater part of the night in each other’s embrace. Somehow this was different. This was him relenting to me. It felt fragile, like a painted porcelain egg.
I lay back on the pillow and held out my open hand. He eased himself down and settled his head in the crook of my shoulder. I slid one arm beneath him, the other on top, and pressed my lips to his brow. His body sank lower in the mattress. His hair brushed my cheek and smelled of soap and evergreens. I smoothed it back as he’d smoothed mine.
It wasn’t long before Anton’s chest rose and fell beside mine in the pattern of peaceful dreaming. Two silent tears tracked down my cheeks, my last thoughts of the night for Pia, and then my eyes drifted closed, my head drooping against the softness of Anton’s hair.
CHAPTER THIRTY
SOMETHING WHITE AND PIERCING AWAKENED ME. A RAY OF sunlight sliced through the crack in the curtains like a dagger. I cringed and turned my face so the beam moved out of my eye. Then I caught sight of Anton and remembered with amazement that I had slept beside him. Our positions had shifted in the night. His head lay across my stomach, his mouth open in deep slumber as his arms draped along my sides. One of mine was bent above my head on the pillow, while my free hand was burrowed in his hair. He appeared younger, more vulnerable, more beautiful now that his cares had slipped away in the realm of sleep. I wanted to stay with him like this forever.
With a sigh of blissful contentment, I cast my gaze back to the window curtains. Then I frowned, blinking at the shaft of light as I studied it closer. It wasn’t hazy with the gray of dawn; it was cut with bright lines. I gasped and nudged Anton. “Wake up!”
He lifted his head and peered up at me with one eye, his chin resting over my dress at the navel. “Sonya?” he said, as if still dreaming.
“I’m supposed to be back in my bedchamber!” I hissed. In all the nights I’d spent in the tapestry room, I’d never once slept so soundly that I hadn’t awoken before Pia came.