Page 57 of Curse of Darkness
The pain eases. My aches vanish. I gasp against him. The strength of his body is so familiar that tears wet my eyes. “You’re back. I found you.”
“Did you?”
Something about the way he says it warns me.
Capturing my chin, he twists my face this way and that.
“Did you find me, Iskvien? Did my dreams finally come true?” There’s a dangerous twist to his smile, something mocking. “Or is this another honey-baited trap?”
“What?” I whisper.
Thiago’s hard gaze rakes the landscape. “This wouldn’t be the first time you’ve walked my dreams.” His voice roughens. “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen your face beckoning me toward danger.”
“I’mreal.” Capturing his face in both hands, I stroke his cheeks. “Look at me, Thiago. Look me in the eyes. I came here for you. I came to bring you back.”
Our eyes meet, and for the first time, I feel the shock of connection between us.
Light and heat shivers through me, bridging the gap between us. It spills through my fingertips, leaving little glowing marks on his skin. The rasp of his stubble plays under my fingertips.
Thiago gasps, clapping a hand to his face. Covering mine as if he can’t bear for me to stop touching him.
“You said you would wait in the Darkness for me.” I tug my chin out of his grasp. “I am real.Thisis real!”
Dark lashes flutter over his eyes. A desperate yearning fills them. “Prove it.”
“How do I…?” He’s never questioned our love before.
His lips curl in a mocking smile. “First misstep, mylove. You’re supposed to tell me something only you would know.” His fist brushes against his temple. “But we both know you’re in my head. We both know I can’t trust the answers to anything I ask. You’re not the first shapeshifter I’ve dealt with.”
I draw back, studying him. There are so many layers to Thiago. So many masks he wears. I shouldn’t take offense. This one is the shield. The one that guards his heart. Because if you strip them all away, deep inside there’s a young man staring up at a gilded castle, wondering why his mother abandoned him. Wondering if maybe there was something wrong with him, something unlovable.
He knows I love him.
But I’m not sure he believes he’s worthy of it.
My mother’s curse was merely another knife in the heart, because every time she would return me to him, I would stare at him as if he were a stranger.
“Then maybe I should tell you something you don’t know. Would you like to know a secret?” I whisper, caressing the back of my knuckles against his leather breastplate. “I loved you from the moment you took me away from my mother. I loved you the night you married me, the night you first made love to me. But I never said it. Because it was new love, a wary love, the love of someone who did not love herself enough to truly give herself over to it. Do you remember the night I first told you I loved you? That I felt it? And knew it? And owned it?”
His dark eyes smolder. “Of course I do. It was the night before I was forced to send you back that first time.” His smile has edges. “Try again, my love.”
“You’re wrong.”
Shock brings some of the empathy back into his expression. “I—what?”
“That wasn’t the first time I told you I loved you. The first time was the night of our first argument.” I can’t help swallowing. “There’d been an attack by the border. Banes. An entire village of our people had been slaughtered, and your face— You were so furious you could barely breathe. You knew it was my mother. She had taken the insult of our marriage and retaliated in the most brutal way she could. The most hurtful way she could. She slaughtered innocents, and yet, we could not prove it.
“I wanted to come with you to visit the village, and we argued about it. You didn’t want me to see such a thing, but I’d spent so long hidden away in my mother’s court, my voice silenced and my presence shunned. I wanted to be your queen, your partner. I didn’t want to be protected or smothered. So you said, ‘Fine, then. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’” I shudder at the memory. “It was horrible. I watched you dig the graves with your power, and suddenly our argument didn’t matter. You were so cold as you organized the entire affair. A stranger in some ways. And I realized that you did it to protect yourself. Because if nobody could see your pain, then nobody could hurt you. But youdidfeel pain. You felt guilty those deaths were on your head. Because you had dared to love me, to take something for yourself, in a world where you felt as though you didn’t deserve such happiness.
“When you came to me that night, you apologized. You finally let me see you. The real you. The one who aches for his people. The one who bleeds so his people do not. The one who wanted to protect me, because you are no stranger to pain. I could see it in your eyes—that vow you silently made me. You would go on hurting, if only so I never knew an ounce of pain.
“But I didn’t want that. I wanted a partnership. A marriage of equals. I wanted to shoulder your burdens too. And so you bent knee and agreed. You promised you would not spare me from your pain and your burdens. You promised you would share them. It’s the first time in my life that someone had truly granted me their heart. I was no longer a caged bird, but this… what you offered me…. It was true freedom.
“We made love and afterward, as I was lying in your arms, the strangest urge overcame me. I loved you, you see. I loved that you let me argue with you, that you didn’t quash my voice. I loved that you could apologize when you were wrong. That your love for me never wavered, even when we were yelling at each other. You didn’t care if I wasn’t perfect. You lovedme, truly loved me, flaws and all. And there you were, asleep on the pillow beside me. And I was still such a coward. I couldn’t say it to your face. Not yet. But I had to say it. I had to whisper it in the dark while you were sleeping, before I lost this feeling. This bravery. But that is the first moment I loved you. Truly loved you. The first moment you let me see you.”
He clenches his eyes shut, physically shaking against the pain of restraint. He won’t believe me. Hecan’t.
Because he has never truly dared show me all of him.
