Reign of Shadows (Reign of Shadows, #1)(63)

He tugged my hand down. “You don’t need to hide from me. Especially not your lips. How will I kiss them?”

I smiled openly then, exposed. “You make me happy,” I admitted, “but I know you didn’t want this between us. You didn’t want to care about me. I feel as though I owe you an apology. You were set on one course and then I came along—”

“And changed everything. Thank you for that.” His mouth brushed mine once, then again, lingering before lifting up. “Don’t apologize. I’m not sorry and you shouldn’t be either. I’m done fighting this . . . you . . . us.”

We kissed again. Feverish, breathless kisses. To think we could have been doing this sooner? I almost wanted to weep at the lost time. Why fight it indeed?

“Exactly,” he muttered against my mouth and I realized I had spoken aloud.

Then all words stopped. The pressure of his mouth grew deeper, more urgent. We had almost missed this.

And tomorrow I would. Tomorrow I’d be gone from here and there would be no more of this ever again.

A deep pang punched me in the chest. I wanted this and not just for now. I wanted it to be like this always. But more important than this happiness I had found with him was saving the lives of countless others.

I pushed him onto his back, taking charge, desperate for him, to make the memory of this so indelible that I never forgot it.

“Luna,” he muttered, my name slipping free from our melded mouths. His hand trailed through my hair, reverent and caressing.

Mirelya’s cane banged on the floor outside the room. “Everything all right in there?”

We tore apart with mutual gasps, my pulse jumping against my throat at the intruding voice.

“Her timing could be improved,” Fowler panted.

I nodded shakily, pushing tendrils of hair back from my face as I sat up.

His hand cupped my cheek, thumb grazing my skin in small circles. I covered his hand with my own, clinging to him, turning my face to kiss his palm. I needed him. I needed to make this night everything because it was all I would ever have. Even if I survived what the future held, I wouldn’t have Fowler again. He’d be at Allu.

That thought fired through me as I took Fowler’s face in both hands, savoring the texture of his skin, the cut of his jaw, the flexing of his cheek muscles beneath my exploring fingers.

When I was a little girl I used to dream my parents were alive. There was no black eclipse. No evil royal chancellor who killed my parents and seized power. The sun still lived. It didn’t hide behind the moon. It arrived every day. Crops grew. People were happy. Safe. No one was hungry. No one suffered in the dark. And I could see. When I dreamed of what I thought perfection could be, it was this.

But that wasn’t perfection. Not even close. Because it wasn’t real.

This was.

“We’re fine, Mirelya,” I called out. “Good night.”

She grunted a response and the thunk of her cane faded across the outside room.

I lowered my head and kissed Fowler again, each kiss slower, longer, imprinting onto the darkness of my mind. His hands roamed over me, slipping under my tunic to trail over my back, his callused palms skimming the line of my spine.

“You’re trembling,” he murmured when I paused, lifting my head. “Are you still frightened?”

Today had been perhaps the closest I’d come to death. But that wasn’t what he meant. He meant this. Us.

I ran my hand through his hair, marveling that it could feel like silk after all the abuse of this world. “The last thing I feel right now is fear.” In this moment, in his arms, there was only joy. An end to the loneliness I had felt for so many years.

“I feel it, too,” he admitted softly, his lips moving on mine as he spoke, so gentle that it broke something loose inside of me. “I’m afraid.”

“Why are you afraid?” In my mind, nothing ever scared him.

“Because you make me feel, Luna.” His hoarse voice was almost unrecognizable. “I haven’t felt anything in a long time. That’s the way I wanted it. I convinced myself it was enough. But you make me want more again. What happened today . . . what could still happen, it terrifies me.” I felt his tremble pass through him and bleed into me.

“Shhh.” I kissed him. “Not now. I don’t want to speak of anything bad right now. Tomorrow is soon enough.”

“I just want to get you out of here.”

“Fowler, you aren’t responsible for my life.” I needed him to know that. “People live and die. People you care about. You can’t bear that burden.” I let that hang between us, hoping it sank in and he remembered it later when I was gone. I knew he’d loved and lost before. I didn’t want him to hurt again like that. Not because of me. “We can’t stop loving and caring about others just because it hurts when we lose them.”

“I’m not losing you.” His hands held my face, his grip all at once tender and fierce.

His words tore through my chest. The boy who had started this journey with me wasn’t the same one before me now. Somehow along the way he had changed from a hardened warrior who treated me only to terse words. He cared about me. He wanted to be with me now and not because Sivo had forced me on him.

“Close your eyes and kiss me,” I whispered, realizing that he wasn’t the only one who had changed. I was different now, too. I lifted a hand to his face, stroked the hard line of his jaw, reveling in the light rasp of his unshaven cheek and the brush of his mouth on mine. “Pretend we’re already there.”