Page 76 of Frost Like Night
Meira didn’t agree with him immediately, and that was enough to make him feel a pang of alarm—then she sighed, the tears in her eyes barely visible in the darkness
“It was never enough,” she said. “All the sacrifices we made for this war. None of it was ever enough, no matter how much it hurt. But this one”—she angled toward him, certainty giving her a slightly mad air—“this one will be, Mather. This one will defeat Angra.”
She paused.
“A conduit must be sacrificed and returned to the chasm,” she whispered, and it seemed to take physical effort for her to push out the words. “The sacrifice will destroy all magic, Angra’s Decay included. IamWinter’s conduit, and I will—”
“What?” Mather cut her off. “Stop.This is how you’ll defeat him? You can’t— Meira,no.”
But she didn’t look convinced. If anything, she looked tired, as though she’d lost another ally.
“I don’t need you to disagree with me.” She pushed to her feet, and he followed her up as her hands formed tight knots at her sides, digging into the satin folds of her skirt when she whirled on him. “That’s part of the reason I’ve hesitated to tell you, but I need you to understand what’s waiting for me in the labyrinth, because . . .” Her mouth bobbed open, her eyes sheened with tears. “I want you. All of you, Mather, for however short a time I have left, but I need you to understand what that means. This isn’t something that will last, and it willhurt, because I know what I’m asking you to do. I’m asking you to love me and let me . . . die.”
Her words became muffled in his ears. It took Mather too long to figure out why he felt a sudden, heavy weight settling over his body.
She really was planning on dying for them.
Then he heard what else she said, and everything in him unraveled.
Longing balled in the pit of his stomach until he thought he might burst if he didn’t do something he had dreamed of doing for a long, long time.
“What about . . . Theron?” Mather closed his eyes.
A cold palm cradled his cheek. He blinked down at her, wariness humming in the back of his throat as Meira looked up with the exact same wariness, as if she had no idea how she had come to stand before him, her hand on his face.
“I will do everything I can to save Theron,” she stated.“But there was always something wrong with us.”
Mather sucked in sharp, short breaths, leaning into her palm more with each word she said, with each word she didn’t say. “Why?”
Damn it all,stop asking questions and just kiss her.
Meira’s hand trembled against his face.
“Because he wasn’t you,” she gasped.
That was it.
Mather wrapped his fingers around her wrist and pulled her forward, cupping the back of her head as he slid his face down to hers. He hovered just shy of her lips, panting, choking because, ice above, this moment—this was everything, the entirety of his life expanding from this one act, revolving around her because she was at the center of everything good that had ever happened to him.
His nose pressed into her cheek, his body vibrating with the compulsion to suck her up like the vortex of a blizzard, the numbing funnel that didn’t allow coherent thought. Her lashes fluttered against his face, her skin glowed pearly in the rising moonlight, making her look so untouchably perfect that Mather’s knees trembled.
She drew a breath and her lips parted in two words that rebounded through his body.
“Kiss me,” she said.
So he did the only thing he could do, the only thing he had ever wanted to do, from the moment they had been children living a nomadic existence under the threat of warand she’d been this stubborn, determined force that had shocked him and scared him and invigorated him.
He kissed her.
Soft, careful, because he wanted to discover every contour of her lips. He closed his eyes and found her through the air between them, and she hooked onto his mouth. Mather scooped her into his arms, her chill radiating into his body and adding urgency to the pulsing need that made his abdomen tight.
They stumbled back until he felt the rock face under his palms, the jagged surface a contrast to the texture of Meira’s lips, her lips, damn, it wasn’t fair that anything could be that soft. He pushed her against the rock, one hand bracing himself on the rough stone because each kiss only made him want more as he drew in ragged breaths between kisses and cursed his need to breathe at all.
His fingers turned to claws, digging into the rock, crumbling chunks of stone and dirt off into his palm as his other hand stroked lines down Meira’s arm, found her waist. He brushed over the gap in her dress, a moan echoing in his throat as his fingers connected with the tantalizing bare skin of her stomach, the curve of her hip. Her wearing this dress was too much and not enough all at once, and she didn’t make it any easier when she knotted her fingers into his hair and echoed his moan, a low, intoxicating purr that made him grip the rock wall harder.
Mather emitted a strangled sound that was more painthan pleasure. All his instincts screaming, he pulled away from her.
She blinked up at him, her hands on his chest. “What’s wrong?”
