Page 20 of The Stolen Throne
Maybe we shouldn’t be dealing with my emotional insecurities right now anyway. The timing to bring this up is all wrong. Cain and Achlys are in danger. We left them. Eidolon could follow and find us any second. And here I am sitting thinking about…
Heat seeps into my cheeks.
Because what I’m thinking about is crawling into Reven’s lap and going back to that kiss from earlier. Like I need that contact to calm me down, which is not like me at best and pathetic at worst. If I could, I’d bury my face in the sand to hide the embarrassment warming my skin, but then he’d know something was wrong.
My friends might be dead, and I’m worried about my romantic status.
I. Am. A. Terrible. Person.
“Hells,” Reven mutters behind me.
At least, that’s what I think he mutters. “What?”
His back against mine tenses, and he’s silent long enough that I’m starting to squirm inside all over again.
“I said hells,” he finally says. Louder. Snarly, like I remember him being. The way he was in the Wildernyss forests after he kidnapped me, the same way I hear his voice in my dreams, and it makes me smile.
Even as those knots in my stomach tighten a tiny bit more.
“What about the hells?” I try to sound casual and start drawing a nonsense pattern in the sand with my fingertip.
“I’m in one. Right now.”
My smile broadens, mostly on a gust of relief. Because he sounds as awkward and as bothered as I feel. Maybe I’m not the only one dealing with this. “Now why in Nova would you—”
In an instant, I’m not sitting with my back to him anymore. I’m not entirely sure if he used shadows or his arms, but I’m straddling his lap, and his fingers are burrowing into my hair, and his aquamarine eyes are lit with a blue-green fire as he stares at me in that fierce way he does. “You know why.”
Thank the goddess.
Belly turning squishy, I lift a hand to trace his cheekbone, run it over the texture of the scruff on his jaw, over lips that are the only soft part of his face, which is all harsh angles and slashing lines. “I missed you.”
His throat works.
“Is it possible to miss someone I hardly had time to know so badly that I had to force myself to eat?” Every single day I was without him.
Something off, hesitant, stirs behind his eyes.
After a stark pause, his body taut under mine, he groans and tugs me closer, kissing me. Not hard and fast and desperate and worried, which is how I feel. This kiss is soft.
Exquisite.
I sigh into him. Yes. This is what I needed—
He suddenly pulls back, his face a study in conflict that strikes at my young, inexperienced heart like a dagger.
“We shouldn’t. I shouldn’t.”
I stiffen, leaning back against his hold, searching his face. Shouldn’t? What was that just now, then? I open my mouth to ask, only my amulet—which has been cold and unresponsive almost since the moment Eidolon put his own amulet around my neck—flash-heats against my skin.
In a rush of sensation like a full-body shudder, I feel my power come back to me. It’s as if every single grain of sand, even in the hard-packed ground where we are, is alive and mine to sense, mine to command. The ground vibrates beneath me. Or it feels that way.
I put my hand over the hard lump under my breastband. Goddesses almighty. Was my amulet the reason? It can’t be a coincidence that it got hot and my powers came rushing back. I couldn’t wear it around Eidolon—is that why they stopped? But no, that can’t be right. I spent years making flowers in the desert before Omma gave me the amulet.
And yet, after months of not wearing it, I tuck the thing into my breastband and my powers return.
None of this makes sense.
“Meren?” Reven’s hands tighten on me, worry edging his voice. “What’s wrong?”
