Page 53 of Bitten & Burned
I turned and looked up. Rowena stood there, the tray in her shaking hands, the china clinking with a nervous rhythm. Her eyes were swollen and raw, lashes spiked from tears. When she looked past me and saw Vael curled into himself—arms wrapped around his knees, his head resting there in uneasy sleep—she didn’t speak. Just swallowed, slowly.
I stood, silent, and took the tray from her hands, setting it gently aside.
She looked at me—really looked, like she was trying to see if I was still real, still safe. Her voice was so quiet I wouldn't have caught it if I hadn't been so close.
“Will you come in?”
I nodded once. “Of course.”
“It’s nearly dawn,” she murmured, almost to herself. “I know you’ll have to go soon, and I’m sorry to ask right now, but...”
Her breath hitched.
“Could you—please—hold me?”
Gods.
Her voice was so small. And still she apologized; still she asked like she might be refused.
I took her hand, brought it to my lips, and let my answer rest against her skin. “Always.”
She led me back inside, quiet as snowfall. We didn’t speak again—not when we reached the chaise, not when she curled intomy side like she’d break if I held her too tightly, and not when her tears began again, soaking through my shirt.
I just held her, slow and steady, my hand tracing the curve of her back, again and again, as if I could rewrite the pain in her body with something softer.
Outside, the sky began to glow—the faintest breath of dawn sighing across the grass.
And still, I held her.
A soft thud against the windowsill caught my attention.
I turned.
Quil.
He eased the glass open with a practiced hand, slipping through the conservatory window as quietly as breath. His boots landed silently on the stone floor. He didn’t move toward us—just hovered there, half-shrouded in shadow, eyes on Rowena.
“I had to see her,” he said, barely audible. “Just once. Before…”
Before the sun, I assumed. Before his courage failed.
His fingers curled hard around the window frame, the tendons in his hand standing out like cord. He looked like he’d been there longer than a moment, watching from the shadows, bracing himself to speak.
“Is she okay?”
His gaze flicked to her hands, then her face, like he was counting the rise and fall of her breathing.
I looked down at her—curled against my side, breathing soft and steady. Then back at him. “She’s safe.”
He nodded, but his gaze didn’t leave her.
“I felt her,” he said. “All that stuff she was feeling… about herself.” He swallowed and rubbed at the inside of his wrist as if it burned, eyes darting back to her again.“I put that in her. She thought all that because I called her a disease, didn’t she?”
I studied him. The sharp angles of his face were drawn tight with regret. His hands flexed at his sides like he didn’t know what todo with them.
“You hurt her,” I said. “What you said? It mattered. You can’t take it back.”
His fists clenched at his sides, then loosened, then clenched again—like he didn’t know whether to reach for her or put his hands as far away as possible.
