Page 4 of Zenith Tower

I had been taught that Ashford men wore their inheritance without complaint. That morning, I had left mine in its box.

The door opened behind me.

Astra stepped inside and closed it. The Tower had given none of us locks, but she tried the latch anyway. When it failed to catch, her fingers stayed on it a moment too long.

“How is Kieran?” I asked.

“Hale got him into bed. I tried to stay, but Kieran told me to stop looking at him as if I expected him to die tonight.”Astra stripped off her coat and dropped it over the foot of the bed. “The reader said there was nothing she could do before review. Hale promised he’d call if anything changed.”

“Do you think he’s going to die?”

She looked at me then. Her hair had dried badly after the tunnel, caught in loose tangles around her face. There was dirt at one temple and a faint gray smear along the side of her dress. She had crossed the bridge in that dress, holding my hand while Kieran struggled behind us and Hale carried more of his weight with every step.

“I don’t know what I expect anymore,” she said.

I understood. Since the formal, we had been moved from one threat to the next without enough time to understand any of them.

Astra came farther in. Her gaze went to my wrists.

“Do you regret it?”

“Refusing the cuffs? No.” I ran my thumb over the place where the metal would have rested. “I regret that part of me still wanted him to approve.”

“That part of you spent nineteen years learning to want it.”

She said it without judgment. The tension in my shoulders eased enough for me to feel how tired I was.

“I would refuse them again,” I said.

“I know.”

Her certainty reached me through the bond before her hand did. She laid her palm against my chest, directly over my heart. Her fingers were cold.

I covered them with mine.

For several breaths, neither of us moved. The lamp gave off little heat. The room smelled of damp wool, tunnel dust, and the mineral water that ran through the Tower. Beneath it all was the familiar warmth of her skin.

Her palm shifted under mine as my heart struck against it.

“I thought the bridge was going to give way,” she said.

“So did I.”

“You didn’t look afraid.”

“I was holding your hand.”

That had been reason enough to keep walking. It still was.

Astra rose onto her toes and kissed me.

There was nothing tentative in it. Her cold hand slid beneath my shirt, and I pulled her against me hard enough to feel the full length of her body. The bond opened with the contact. Fear was still there, threaded through her exhaustion, but so was relief. She was warm and breathing against me.

She pushed my coat from my shoulders. It caught at one elbow, and I dragged it free without letting go of her. One of us struck the lamp table. The flame shuddered behind its glass, throwing our shadows against the false window.

I broke the kiss long enough to look at her.

“Don’t start thinking now,” she said, breathless.