Page 157 of The Stolen Throne
He gets right in my face. “You’re not alone.”
“I’m always alone.” Even now that I’m surrounded by friends. Tabra can step back in as queen after the Rites, so I’ll lose her, too.
“You are never alone, even when I can’t be there.” Reven drops his hand to feather his fingers over my scar made of shadow and magic. Made of him. The contact sends zaps of lightning surging through me, lighting me up and drawing a shudder of pure sensation to the surface.
The shadows inside me come to instant, decadent life, and through them I can feel…Reven. He’s no longer closed off, and our connection, the shadowy part of me is alive with it. He’s right here, inside me, and I feel everything about him. His need for me. The terror of reaching for me. Of daring to hope, only to lose me. Or worse, hurt me.
Everything that I feel, only more. Which only tumbles me into a riot of emotions, so many different ones that separating them out is hard—relief, peace, joy, fear to lose it all again, and an agony of need.
“I am always with you,” he says. Solemn. Sincere.
Goddess.
I’ve never let myself picture my future before. Only small snippets. Glimpses. Things Omma would say or do that would make me imagine myself at her age. There was nothing for me to look forward to, not then. And since all this started, I’ve only been able to look to the next moment. Put one foot in front of the other. Solve the problem in front of me. Survive.
I know what I want my future to look like now.
Even though I don’t think I’ll ever get to have it, I want to reach for it anyway, work for it. I want to make it happen, even though I know the chances are slim.
He’s all I want. Is that too much to ask?
The best I can do is hope for it…and try. See if I can develop this ability the way I did my power over sand. I could give us a future, but even more than that, I could give him a future. He wouldn’t have to cope alone anymore.
I shouldn’t tell him. It’s too much pressure. With everything going on, it’s too much. As long as he’s willing to stay near me, test this out, I’ll wait.
I can wait.
I go up on tiptoe again and press my lips to his, and we sort of melt into each other.
We both pull back at the same time. “We’d better get back to the others,” I say.
Taking my hand, Reven removes the darkness, and we’re standing in the room. I blink in the sudden light of the braziers.
Our friends blink back at us.
“You can go to the hells for scaring us like that,” Pella snarls.
Before we can answer, a horn blasts within the castle walls, so loud it feels as though the very floors shake.
I jump, not expecting it, and suddenly, in a swirl of shadow, Reven and I aren’t standing in the room anymore, but in the hallway.
“Holy shit,” he utters. “That was not me.”
“So it was me?” I squeak. “Why? Because I was…”
“Scared,” he fills in when I trail off.
But I’m busy thinking through all the other times. “I think it always happens when I’m scared.”
The more scared—for me, for him, for my friends—the more I can do. Is that the trick? It kind of sucks if it is. I can picture it now, him having to scare the wits out of me every time he loses it so I can help him get control.
Reven swings the door open and sticks his head inside. “Sorry about that. We’re out here.”
“The sound,” I say. “What was that?”
“The signal,” Vos answers.
Reven drops his forehead to my temple. “We have to leave the palace.”
