The Wish Granter (Ravenspire #2)(99)

He was coming apart at the seams, and there was no remedy. He’d been an island for so long, he no longer knew how to bridge the distance he’d put between himself and others.

He desperately needed Ari to be his bridge.

He must have made a noise, because her head whipped up, and she met his gaze.

“Sebastian, are you all right?” Worry puckered her brows as she quickly folded whatever she’d been reading and stuffed it down the front of her dress.

He wanted to tell her what he’d done. He wanted the painful exorcism of putting the horror into words. But when he opened his mouth, all that came out was “Ari.”

Her eyes widened as he stumbled toward her.

She reached for him as he slid to his knees at the edge of her mattress. Falling to her knees in front of him, she gathered him in her arms and pulled his face against her shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her, fisted his hands in the back of her nightdress, and hung on like she was all that was keeping him from drowning.

“You’re going to be all right. No matter what happened. I promise.” She kept softly repeating the words as he shook. As he tried and failed to put words to what lived inside him. With one hand, she pressed firmly on the center of his back, on the scars that had slowly stripped him of any expectation of ever being loved. With the other, she cradled his head to her shoulder, her lips pressed against his ear as she filled his chaotic thoughts with the steady constant of her voice.

“Ari,” he whispered, and then the words were there, terrible and stark. He told her about the things he’d had to do as Teague’s collector. How he worried that the line between himself and his father was blurring. And then he told her about Kora, and it was all he could do to speak past the awful pressure in his chest. All he could do to find the air to breathe as he let the truth tear its way out of him.

When he’d finished, spent and exhausted, she still held him. Her breathing was steady and calm, a lifeline he grabbed onto with desperate strength, though he still trembled. The warmth of her skin chased the chill from his, and when she spoke again, her lips hovering beside his ear, her words cut through the remaining panic and became a foundation he could stand on without fear.

“I’m sorry you’ve had to be hurt so many times, Sebastian. That’s not fair to you. It makes me want to stand in front of you and fight everybody off, just to give you the space to see that you’re worth so much more than you believe.”

Gently, she lifted his head from her shoulder and framed his face in her hands. “You are nothing like your father. Nothing inside you makes you want to cause pain to others. You have more courage than anyone I’ve ever known. Sometimes having courage means the hardest tasks fall onto your shoulders, and those leave the biggest scars.”

He held her gaze and made himself say, “I don’t know my way back from this.”

Her expression softened. “I do.”

“How?” He breathed the word. Filled it with the pained hope that her words had given him and trusted her to somehow have the answer.

She smiled—the confident, knowing smile he loved best—and said, “Remember what you said to me when you cooked me breakfast and then almost kissed me?”

“What did I say?”

She leaned closer, and it was suddenly hard to steady his breathing. “You said you knew the way to my heart.”

Her eyes warmed when he remained silent.

“Want to know a secret?” she asked, and he did. He really, really did.

“Yes,” he whispered as her lips hovered above his, a mere breath away.

“I know the way to your heart too. I know your silences and your smiles. I understand you when you’re still, and I hear the things you don’t know how to say. You aren’t facing any of this alone, Sebastian.” She slid her hands into his hair, and all he could think about was the way she smelled like buttered toast, and things waiting to be discovered, and home.

He tilted his head back to look into her eyes. “I shouldn’t say this to you.”

“Oh, you definitely should.”

He shouldn’t. It was impossible. It was crazy.

It was also true, and he wanted truth with the princess.

With Ari.

He gathered his courage and said quietly, “I love you. I know that’s inappropriate because you’re the princess, and I’m—”

She covered his mouth with hers, and everything disappeared except the way she tasted and the incredible heat of her lips moving against his. He pulled her closer, desperate to erase any sliver of air between them. She wrapped her arms around the back of his neck and kissed him like he was the answer to every craving she’d ever had.

When she pulled back, he gazed at her face—at the flush of pink on her golden skin and the disheveled tendrils of hair escaping her braid. At the vulnerable look in her dark eyes.

“Sebastian?”

“Yes?”

“I love you too.”

He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to hers. He was still horrified. Still grieving. So was she.

But they weren’t facing any of it alone.

He’d told her the truth. She knew who he was and what he’d done, and she was still by his side. He drew in a deep, easy breath and kissed her again as the crashing, churning panic that had driven him into her arms subsided into something Sebastian hadn’t experienced in years.