The Mirror King (The Orphan Queen, #2)(136)

“Oh.” The word came as a breath.

“Wilhelmina Korte, from the moment we met, you challenged me in ways I needed to be challenged. In ways I want to be challenged. I’ve known it all along.

“When I chose her, I chose wrong. Oh, I’d have done my best to make her happy. I cared about her. But I’m just as responsible for her death, and I’ve spent the last months learning to accept that.” Tension ran from his shoulders and he stepped back, firelight glowing across the planes and angles of his face. “And I don’t want to ignore how much I feel for you, either. There’s an undeniable gravity between us. I know you feel it, too.”

“Yes.”

And it seemed as though everyone else sensed it, too. James. Melanie. Chrysalis. Meredith. Even Prince Colin.

“We keep drifting toward each other.” Tobiah’s eyes were steady on mine, so familiar in the faint light. “No matter the masks we wear, we always end up together.”

“I’m tired of wearing masks.”

“So am I.” He cupped his hands over my cheeks. “Wilhelmina. I know we have a lot to work out, but I can’t deny that I want you.”

My heart beating so hard made my chest ache. His list slipped from my fingers, floating, skimming across the floor a little ways before it settled.

Tobiah’s fingertips brushed against my face, cool and gentle. “I want every part of you. The nameless girl. The Osprey. The vigilante. The queen. Wilhelmina, you have a hundred identities and I love every one of them.”

I couldn’t stop my smile. Maybe I didn’t have to understand how he could love me after all the things I’d done, just accept that he did—and that maybe, probably, he felt the same way about my love for him.

He bent so his forehead rested against mine. “A few times now you’ve told me not to kiss you anymore. Do I have your permission this time?”

“You have enthusiastic permission.” I cupped his face in my hands, keeping him in place as I tilted my head to kiss him. Softly, at first. A brush of my lips against his.

“Again?” His eyes were closed, but he was smiling.

“Yes.” When we kissed, the muscles of his jaw flexed under my fingers, and the shape of his body fit with mine. His arms fell around me, drawing us close. His hands pressed against my waist and hips and the small of my back. His mouth moved against mine, deepening the kiss until we were drowning.

He’d been right about gravity. We’d spent our lives falling toward each other, and now he was in my arms. I was in his.

“Wil,” he breathed. “Wilhelmina.”

With my hands on his face, fingertips tracing the lines and curves of his jaw and cheeks, I could feel the way he said my name.

My name.

We were no longer vigilante and thief, or sullen prince and hidden princess, or only half aware of the other’s identity. This was love without masks.

I pushed my fingers through his hair and kissed his mouth and chin and neck and the hollow of his throat. He dropped back his head in surrender as heat from the fireplace washed over us in waves.

The world fell away. I breezed my hands down his back, mapping the ridges of muscle beneath his clothes. He kissed a trail down my jaw and neck and shoulder. We breathed in time with each other, like we were one.

A door clicked and footsteps sounded, but I didn’t pay attention until Melanie said, “I guess this means Paige should prepare the castle for a wedding.”

Tobiah kissed me again and drew back, just enough so I could see the smile that warmed his face. “One day.”

“One day,” I agreed.

Melanie stood in the doorway, a packet of papers in one hand, and holding the fallen list in the other. “For propriety’s sake, I’d bolt the doors between your rooms and take the keys, but you’re both disreputable enough to pick the locks.”

“Definitely.” Tobiah grinned at me.

“Did you come here to tease us, Mel?” My heart still pounded with Tobiah’s nearness. “Or was there something else?”

“I brought good news.” She offered the packet to me.

The top sheet was a map: Aecor, shaded in red, and the barrier around us, silver. The north and south were still questions, but in the west, the Indigo Kingdom was marked with the familiar colored bands of wraith movement. The bands covered the entirety of the Indigo Kingdom.

Tobiah’s shoulders curled in.

“Mel—”

“Look at the next page.”

I obliged, but it was the same thing. Just another map showing how isolated and alone we were on this peninsula. But . . .

“What is this?” Tobiah skimmed his finger down the eastern coast of the Indigo Kingdom. It was just a narrow space, but there was no color to mark wraith. He looked up. “Are these backward?”

“Look at the next page,” she said again, grinning.

On the third map, the wraith-free band was a breath wider.

I could hardly breathe. “The wraith is retreating?”

Melanie shook her head. “We’ve had people monitoring the Indigo shore since the barrier went up, and they all agree it’s not retreating. But when it reaches the bay, it changes. It’s healing.”

Healing.

“How quickly?” Tobiah whispered.

Melanie nodded at the maps in my hand. “These were from the last day. Since the barrier went up.”