She chuckled, drunk on the night. “Which was your favourite?”
Dez pressed his lips to her forehead, then each of her eyelids, and last her nose. “Yours. You have a knack for words amongyour many other talents.” Dez kissed her slow and sweet, then murmured against her lips, “Now for the sake of my sanity, please sleep. It’s nearly dawn and I need my hour of beauty rest.”
“It’s your fault you kept me up.” Her cheeks burned as her mind fell back to exactly how he had carried her up to his room, laid her out on his bed, and taken her all over again. The man truly was insatiable.
He laughed softly. “Wait until I have you all to myself for a few days. You’ll be sick of me yet.”
“Never,” she murmured.
And she meant it.
She fought sleep, trying to memorize the strength of his arms, the warmth of his breath, the sureness of his hands, his lips in her hair, his skin grazing hers, meeting everywhere, and how he was entirely and always hers. But as he continued that featherlight path up and down her spine, she lost herself to it, hypnotized into the darkness behind her closed lids, though now it wasn’t hollow, but filled with warmth.
She faded into sleep, even as the morning broke the sky.
When Emmery woke, she stretched for Dez’s side of the bed, though she knew it would be empty. Regardless, her heart ached in his absence. So she distracted herself and played with the black ice at her fingertips, a snowflake, a burst of icy mist, and she hoped he could feel it through the bond.
She summoned her flame to one hand and Dez’s ice to the other, then touched the tips of her fingers. They sizzled with a hiss, then nullified.
It brought a frown to Emmery’s lips. Never had anything matched her power like that, and some instinct stirred in her, unsettled.
She rose, dressed, then puttered around Dez’s room until Aera made an appearance. “Where have you been, little troublemaker?” Emmery teased.
Aera gave her a snaggle-toothed grin, and toddled over. First she smelled Emmery’s hand, then stood on her back legs and nosed the bond over her heart. The fox showered each scar in slobbery kisses then stretched like a cat, and curled up on Dez’s side of the bed like she missed him, too.
With Fionn and Brennen off with Dez, Vera bedridden from the fever, and Cyrilla on an errand for the next few days, Emmery visited Talia. The chambermaid marvelled at her bonds, curtsying and fussing and leaving Emmery frazzled beyond belief. Gods, how would she deal with all the attention when Dez returned? What would that even look like?
There was too much to escape from in her own mind, and soon she found herself at Soren's bedside. As she looked upon the little boy’s sleeping face, she choked back guilty tears.
Because she’d been selfish.
More selfish than she ever thought she could be. She’d chosen Dez and known others would suffer. And though a connection existed between them, something intense, unexplainable, and all consuming, it wasn’t enough. She still needed to find Shade. And she didn’t know if animplexusbond could overshadow her affections for Dez. Yet, as she traced their bonds, she didn’t regret it.
She loved him. And he loved her. Even if they hadn’t said as much aloud.
And Zyphira had claimed love was the strongest force in the world and would always win.
Emmery took Soren from his crib, and as she sat with him on the floor, he quickly settled into her arms and snuggled into her neck. She leaned back against the wall and counted each of his breaths, timed them with her own, and tried to swim upstream against the rapid current of despair.
Soon his fever would return with vengeance, and they didn't know how to fix this or how much time he had left. And the longer he slept, swept away in thatveramintinduced haze, the deeper her thoughts dug, until she looked up from a black pit and could no longer see the sun.
Her chest convulsed as she tried to take a steady breath. And she became stuck in a mantra of apologies. “I’m sorry. I’msosorry, Soren. I’m so,sosorry.”
Because it was unfair. So damn unfair.
She mourned everything she had lost. Everything she’d never had. Everything she hadn’t come to terms with. How lucky she was to have Dez, who would hold her through it all. But how this little boy and so many others would pay for her selfishness.
She was lost in those thoughts, in the constant gloom of both her and this world’s future, when a soft rap at the window drew her attention to a four-eyed raven. She blinked at Quill, stood, and gently lowered Soren back into his crib, before she opened the window to let the raven in.
Then Vesper’s voice spewed from Quill’s mouth, frantic and muffled like he couldn’t breathe, and her world crumbled once again.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
EMMERY
Emmery’s hands trembled as she dressed in her leathers and strapped on her daggers, but they shook uncontrollably as she scrawled the letter to Dez to explain why she was leaving, why he couldn’t come after her, how sorry she was to put him through this after she promised herself to him and made plans for a future they would never have.
And that she loved him. Gods, that she loved him endlessly, and she was sorry it took her so long to realize it. That she’d wasted all that time they could’ve had, and she never told him.