Page 70 of Ember and Eclipse
Devdan was cooking. He’d found another tunic, but it was tight in his arms and across his shoulders. She watched the muscles in his back and biceps stretch the fabric as he moved a pot off the fire.
He looked comfortable. Like he had lived here as long as her. He moved in a way that made it seem he had been the one to organize the shelves and store everything away.
They weren’t a witch and a witch hunter anymore. Somehow, it was all more complicated now that he was actuallyhere, in her home.
The silhouette, the featureless possibility she had imagined a thousand times before, suddenly had a face.
And it scared her more than anything else she had ever confronted.
“What are you doing?” Her voice was harsher than she intended.
Devdan froze, then carefully put the lid on the pot and turned to face her. He muttered something that sounded a lot like “pleasantries” to himself. Then, “I’m making a meal. You need to eat.”
“And would you care about me eating if it wasn’t for this,” she gestured between them and then pressed the hand to her chest. She couldn’t say the word.
“Is that what you think? That the bond is the only reason I care?”
“Isn’t it? It’s the only reason you’re here at all.”
“I’d have come here because you’re my mate, yes. But I wouldn’t have stayed.”
“What do you mean?”
“Believe it or not, I don’t generally enjoy overstaying my welcome.”
“And yet you’re still here,” she said through gritted teeth.
“I won’t leave until you tell me to.”
“You,” she seethed, “said that was no longer an option.”
“It wasn’t when you were killing yourself,” he snapped.
Rel crossed her arms over herself. “So, if I tell you to leave this instant, you’ll go?”
He licked his lips, and then his jaw flexed before he nodded imperceptibly. She couldn’t read his expression, but it was a look she hadn’t seen on his face ever before, not even when they were both about to die outside of Athena’s temple.
Anguish? Heartbreak?
“And you’ll never return?” she prompted.
“I won’t return. But there are things you should know then so that you can make the most informed decision.”
She tilted her head, motioning for him to continue.
“The bond doesn’t control our actions, and though it can intensify feelings, it can’t create it from nothing. If I walked past you in a market, having never met you, and felt the bond, I’d naturally want to know you. But it can’t make me, or you,feel.”
“But I didn’t ask for this. I have only ever been used, owned, trapped. My safety, my happiness, my mind,myheart—none of it mattered. And now,now, you tell me we are… connected. By Fate! And, once again, I don’t have a choice in what happens to me or my body. This damn feeling in my chest—” She was breathing heavily, and her words cracked as she placed her hand between her breasts.
“You’re not listening. You get a choice. Itneedsto be a choice. If you tell me to leave at any point, I will. But what you’re feeling, whatI’mfeeling”—he pressed his hand into his own chest—“the mating bond didn’t create that.”
She groaned. “I don’t want to be wanted because some part of your design says I’m made for you. I’m not your destiny. You don’t get to own me.”
“I don’t want to own you.”
His response came at the same time she yelled, “I belong only to myself!”
The silence in the wake of her declaration drifted between them. It settled over them like they were two statues caught in time, collecting dust.
