Page 102 of The Coven of Ruin
She would make a thousand bargains with a thousand gods if only to draw such sounds from him for a lifetime.
And when they could do nothing but cling to each other, their bodies giving out, she rested her forehead against his. Their chests met with rough inhales, their hearts thudding in revolution. With his arm still around her, he leaned back to rest on the moss again, despite both of them letting out quiet, pained noises with the movement. When they were settled, her curls fell around their faces like a curtain of conclusion.
This is how they would die, pressed against each other, with only the trees as their witness. A witch and the Witchbane.
“What armor this time, witch?” he finally questioned against her mouth, pressing small kisses between the words.
“Which was true?”
“Hm?”
“Thel asked you what I meant to you, and you answered that I was known to you and that I was everything. Which is true?”
He kissed her unhurriedly like they had nothing but time. The answer was held on his tongue, shared in the sacred space of their mouths. And it was in the way he held her as if he could protect her from death itself.
When he pulled back far enough that she could just make out the golden depths of his irises, the answer was there too. “You are everything.” He brushed his lips against the corner of her mouth, then along her jaw, with such tenderness it brought tears to her eyes. “And I’m sorry I couldn’t reach you,” he rasped. “I’m sorry I failed you.”
No armor was left between them. They were exposed. Vulnerable.
And dying.
“You didn’t fail me, Ares. And you are more than your sword. I think this was always my destiny,” she whispered between shallow breaths.
“Destiny,” he scoffed softly. “We began in blood, and we end in blood.”
They had begun and ended with a kiss too.
She wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Her head rested on his shoulder, her face buried against his neck. The weight of their fate pressed in on her with its final insistence. She asked it to halt its approach, begged, offered her life debt, but such things were not negotiable.
“You said,” she rasped against the soft flesh of his neck, “that you could find me anywhere.”
“I’ll find you, even in death,” he swore.
“I wish…”
“Trista.” Her name on his lips was agony, so much so that it didn’t even resemble her name anymore. It sounded only like another two-syllable word that held much more finality.
Goodbye.
Chapter XLIV
“Wecannot.Youareaware of the rules better than anyone.”
“Yes, and yet you allowed them to enter. Conveniently, this forest is one of the only places protected against prying eyes.”
“What would you have had me do? Besides, that hardly counts as intervention.”
“They aren’t going to adhere to these rules. They haven’t already. Look at the destruction they have wrought in such a short time.”
“So, we are to break the very laws that govern us? Where will that lead us? That makes us no better than her. Besides, regardless of what this witch has somehow accomplished, he is the same god who set us on this course to begin with. He condemned us.”
“And he may be the only one to save us.”
“The laws...”
“Bah.”
“As you see fit, then.”
