“I’m inclined to agree,” Quinn says.
“It doesn’t need to be tonight, my lord. We can have these discussions in the coming weeks,” Callos says.
“The idea is fresh and we are committed to it—there is no time like the present.” Ruvan is insistent. There’s a sturdy resoluteness to his shoulders and jaw. No one is going to be shaking him from this decision. “Moreover, I want to have time to sleep on, challenge, and debate our plans before finalizing them. We will not let this lie.”
“Very well. I will do as you bid.” Callos bows his head and starts from the room.
The rest of them exchange wary glances, but all reluctantly agree. Quinn is the last one out. I can feel his questions about my lingering presence—my hand still on his lord’s person—but he doesn’t voice them. I wonder what the rest of them will say. My ears burn with everything I can’t hear…
She’s staying with him. Alone. She touched him.
Forbidden. All of this is so forbidden.
I pull my hand from his shoulder, balling it into a fist. I hold it to me as though it’s wounded. My other fingers wrap around it, massaging my skin. My flesh is my own and yet—
“Floriane?” Ruvan says softly. His fingertips land lightly on my chin, guiding my eyes back to his. “What is it?”
“I’m afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Everything.” I shake my head and voice all the conflicting feelings that have sunk their thorny barbs into me for days. “What’s happening to me?”
“What do you mean?”
“Am I just a puppet now?”
“Why would you think that?”
“I need you. I want to push you away. I’ve always been told I cannot allow myself to be touched and yet all I want are your hands on me.” My words become hasty. “I saw you lying, dying, becoming one of those monsters, and all I could think about was saving you. I had to see you—save you—be with you.”
“Floriane, breathe,” he says softly.
The suggestion only heightens my frustration, making my breath hitch further. “I am breathing.”
“You’re panicking.”
“Of course I am!” I reach for him. My hands smooth up the broad plane of his chest like a lover’s before balling into fists in his clothing like an enemy’s. They tremble as the idea of strangling him passes through my mind for the first time in days. Desire is quickly thwarted by instant nausea at the mere notion of hurting him. “All my thoughts feel controlled by you. They keep coming back to you.”
His hands lightly land on mine. I want to slap them away, but I’m consumed by his calm, stable gaze. Ruvan is as sturdy as iron. “I promise, you are still your own woman.”
“Then why do my thoughts no longer feel like my own? Why can I think of nothing but helping you?” I beg him for answers that I don’t know if he can give me. But I need them. I need them more than I need every shuddering breath I’m struggling to draw. “Do I really want to help you? Or is this need just the magic of the bloodsworn taking over my mind and infiltrating my thoughts? Do I actually, genuinely care about you, Ruvan? Or do I want you to die as fiercely as I was always told I should? As I always thought I did?”
He says nothing. The silence is worse than anything else he might have come up with. It makes me want to scream.
Yet I whisper, “Tell me, please.”
“I can’t.” The words are soft and somehow all the more grating because of it. “I can’t tell you because I don’t know your heart; that’s something only you can know.” His hands grip mine. “But I can tell you what my heart is saying. It’s saying you’re not alone in this confusion, or this unbearable need to explore all that’s happening between us—all we could be despite all odds.”
I grow still as his eyes become even more intense. I’m drawn to him, pulled by invisible hands and unyielding needs. “You feel it too?”
“Of course I do.” He shakes his head. “I see you and I don’t know if I see the monster hunter that I always pictured—the bloodthirsty woman who came for my throat with a silver sickle on the night of the Blood Moon—or if I see Floriane…” His voice grows softer, more tender. “The forge maiden who has brought a heartbeat back into the castle of my forefathers, one I can hear echoing up softly to me with the sharp clang of metal. A woman who has hands that can kill or create. A woman who enthralls me more by the hour with every layer of pain and hurt, knowledge and power, goodness and darkness that there is to her.”
I let out a huff of laughter and shake my head. He saw me as the monster. Just as I saw him. We both looked at each other and saw what we wanted and what the world had told us to see, not what was actually there. And now that we’re confronted with the truth…
“I don’t know what to do,” I confess. My heart is slowing and thoughts clearing thanks to his firm, steady grasp. “I don’t know what to believe. Do I trust in my training and the instincts it gave me? My sense, logic, or reason? Or do I trust in my heart?”
“What do you want to trust in?”
