Incendiary (Hollow Crown #1)(27)

“Andrés?” I say. I love the weight of his true name on my lips.

“Only my father calls me that.” He chuckles and lowers his nose into the crook of my neck. My skin sings as he stops his lips before they touch. “Don’t tell anyone.”

“Why?”

He draws back to meet my gaze. “It never suited me.”

I brush the stubble along his jaw. I remember a few years ago, when he could barely grow it out. His soft lips brush my knuckles. His mouth is like warm, wet dew on my skin. My left hand trembles, and Dez takes hold of it. My fingers open up for him like rose petals for the sun. He kisses the inside of my wrist. The center of my palm. The whorls and pads of my fingers. The tingle—the ache of it—is almost too much.

He kisses my lips once, then draws back. I remember the first time I stole a kiss from him in the grove behind our ruins two years ago. We’ve traded kisses in secret, during moments we thought we were going to die and because we didn’t. He’s kissed me in the rain when I ran away. I kissed him when I stayed. Our lives were forged together by fire. Sometimes I’m afraid that fire has never left me.

My back arches as I return Dez’s kiss with a fury I’ve kept locked inside. I hardly know where to put my hands. All I know is that I want to touch every part of him. I push up the hem of his tunic and let my fingers trace a jagged scar along his ribs where the Bloodied Prince’s blade nearly killed him. He hisses from surprise, his muscles tightening at my touch, but doesn’t stop kissing me and instead the pressure of his body on mine tells me how much he wants me. I undo the button of his pants and even though he whispers my name, he pulls away.

The absence of him, even for this moment, hurts. There’s that smile of his, crooked as the summer day is long. I push his tunic halfway up, but he pulls it off and discards it to the side. The cool breeze rustles the dark waves of his hair.

“We should go back,” he says breathlessly.

“We should stay,” I say. I unbutton my shirt down the center.

His finger hovers over the injured curve of my neck. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Then don’t. Just once I would like to kiss you when we’re not waiting for imminent death.”

“Is that not what we do every day?”

“You know what I mean.”

“We will have that. I want to make a better world for you. For all of us.”

“In the meantime,” I say, and continue undoing the brass buttons of my trousers and then his. “We have this forest and each other.”

He shuts his eyes and makes a sound I’ve never heard him make before. Under the half-moon I can count the muscles on his back as he positions himself in front of me. He kisses the bare skin of my stomach. The crosshatch of scars from fighting side by side. I used to hate the marks on my skin, but it is the one thing that makes me feel like I am part of the Whispers, part of Dez. His fingers hook around the waistband of my trousers and tug them down. Hands squeeze my thighs and I gasp from how good it feels to be touched this way by him.

“I love you, Renata,” he says, haloed by the moon. “I need you to know that.”

I know it. I think I’ve known it for a while. I wanted to blame it on the stress of facing our enemies, of not knowing whether or not we’d live to see each other again. People consume each other when they’re afraid, don’t they? But I know this is real.

I love you, too, I want to say, but I can’t. A cord in my heart snaps. I pull on his arms to come back up to me, so I can return his reverent kisses, run my fingers through the dark waves of his hair. His grin is wicked as he kisses the inside of my knee.

“Andrés,” I whisper.

I may know little else, in the chaos of this world. But I know this for sure, something I couldn’t put into words until now. I love this boy and I would do anything to keep him safe. I’ll face my past if I have to. When Dez pushes one of my knees aside, I am sure we are bonded together by more than blood and loss. We are as inevitable as the dawn.





Chapter 7


Dez falls asleep nestled against my chest, his tunic and pants rolled under my head as a pillow. I thread my fingers around his soft black curls. He mutters and moans in his sleep. I wonder what he’s dreaming about. My body is wide-awake even though I’m perfectly at ease. Were we reckless? No, because we both drink the tea all spies in our rank take if they want to prevent pregnancy. But now I’m left wondering what comes next. Sharing your fears with someone else changes things. At some point today the other units will arrive and we will have to be soldiers. That’s the only way we can get through it all and make a better world together.

I trust you, he said. Since leaving Esmeraldas he’s been different in a way I can’t explain. Is it my own nerves that I’m projecting? I dig for the token he gave me. Affection. Presents. Dez has always given me these things. But tonight, it almost feels like he was trying to fit a lifetime of love into a few moments. Maybe in his heart he doesn’t believe we’re going to survive the attack on the capital.

The thought needles at me as I turn the copper coin in my fingers. I think of the moment the prince ripped it from Dez’s chest. A terrible shiver puckers the skin of my arms when I remember the cold edge of the prince’s blade. Dez almost died, but he didn’t leave that balcony without his family heirloom. I trace my thumb over the stamp. Who was the woman minted on one side? Only the Fajardo men grace the kingdom’s currency. I don’t wear it. That feels like the kind of promise we shouldn’t make until after. . . . I pocket the coin and try to let sleep take me.