The bald statement brought me up short. If he’d said that to me a few days ago, I would have been delighted, buoyed at the thought that he felt too much for me to be logical. But now the words sliced my rib cage like a scythe. This might be the last time he admitted to feeling anything for me more than anger. Or worse, indifference.
In our shared history, I’d never truly let Arcus see how much I needed him. And he, in perfect pantomime, did the same. No one wanted to be the first to admit we felt more than we could handle.
And now, I was walking away.
A stabbing pain radiated from my heart, which seemed confused about whether to pour out heat or to stop beating altogether.
Was he right? Was I just looking for excuses to go to Sudesia?
No. I might be impulsive, but Brother Thistle wasn’t. He had no agenda other than helping Arcus, helping Tempesia. He also cared about me and wouldn’t risk my safety if he didn’t think it absolutely necessary. We needed to take this chance.
And I had to try to pull Arcus back to me before I left.
I moved so close that my legs pressed against the side of the mattress. My hand came to rest on his arm, its muscles rigid with tension. The temperature dropped, giving him away. He wasn’t as calm as he wanted me to believe. There were cracks in his defenses.
As I bent toward him, he turned his head away and my lips landed on his cheek. The world narrowed to the small patch of his skin where two opposing temperatures struggled for dominance: the insistent heat of my lips, the defiant cold of his cheek. Neither yielding. Neither moving. The breath in my lungs cooled.
The realization hit me like shards of broken glass: He was not going to acknowledge my caress. He was going to pretend I wasn’t even here, denouncing me completely with his perfect stillness. It felt as if I were being slowly ripped in half. He was forcing me into a choice I’d had no intention of making: To save the kingdom, I would lose him.
My heart skipped a beat when he finally moved. His hand came out to cover mine, his skin colder than my northern village in the dead of winter. Relief flooded me at his touch, until I realized he was only peeling my fingers from his arm, one by one.
“Good-bye, Ruby.” His voice was as empty as the abandoned arena, echoing with the ghosts of past pain.
The shock somehow released me from my paralysis. I straightened.
“Good-bye,” I echoed, my blood heating with anger. His skin was marble, his eyes so pale they were light gray, almost colorless. I know you care about me! I wanted to shout. Don’t push me away!
I needed to move. I focused on the muscles in my legs, telling them to turn me in the direction of the door. Ordering my feet to take me away. Now, quick, before you scream and rage and make a fool of yourself.
Then, just as I started to turn, his face twisted, as if something inside him had suddenly broken. His hands gripped my wrists and pulled, but I was already pitching forward, my hand clutching his shoulder. Our lips met with jarring force, the reverberation landing in my jaw. And then the angle righted itself as he tilted his head to welcome the invasion.
He was so cold against my tongue that I shivered. He tasted like a winter morning, of icy water and mint tea. I drank him in with thirsty sips and he nipped my lower lip in punishment and reward.
When his fingers dove into the hair at the nape of my neck and his open mouth slid to the sensitive spot under my ear, I forgot everything except need, scrambling to throw my leg over his hips so I straddled him, my chest leaning against his. It took a moment for me to recognize his sharp inhalation as pain. He was injured and I was hurting him.
I subsided instantly, crumpling next to him like a falling scarf, settling slowly into stillness. His hand grabbed mine and drew it to his mouth, continuing the kiss in a safer, softer way. His lips rested against my wrist, where the red vein still throbbed with passion, soothing the skin while the pulse beneath slowly returned to normal.
We stayed that way for a long time, silent except for breathing that went from ragged to even. I shifted so that my head was pillowed on a spot low enough on his chest that I didn’t touch the bandage. His hand settled on my head, stroking my hair. My scalp tingled with pleasure. After a while, the silence thickened.
“Why do we always go back to hurting each other?” I asked in a small voice, hoping not to destroy the fragile truce.
He paused long enough that I started to worry. “Because we feel too much,” he said roughly.
I nodded, my head still tucked against his torso, relieved and full of understanding. “You hate it. Feeling.”
“No, I don’t,” he denied instantly. “I hate… being at the mercy of it. I hate when I can’t tuck the feelings away because they’re too strong.”
I lifted his hand and played with his fingers, thinking how beautiful they were—strong and capable and dusted with fine brown hairs.
“You’d be better off with someone who”—I swallowed—“didn’t make you feel so out of control.”
“Maybe,” he said after a moment, making my heart stutter sickly. “But I wouldn’t choose that.”
I said very quietly, “You might have to choose that.”
He had a duty to his people, to his court, but I wanted to hear him say that he didn’t want the perfectly bred Marella, that he’d rather have me. But that was unfair to ask of him now, when I was about to leave. I closed my eyes tight, tight, and tried not to think about how much easier that choice could be in my absence.
“We have to let each other go a little,” he said very softly, as if reading my mind, confirming my worst fears. “We both know that the future… We might have choices ahead that we can’t predict now. We have to allow each other to make them without blame.”
He said it so gently, tenderly. Somehow that made it hurt more. Why did he have to be so reasonable now, when I’d finally surrendered to feeling? I couldn’t hold back the tears, my body shaking a little as I tried to quell them.
“I don’t want to let you go,” he said unevenly, “but I’ll go mad if I try to keep holding on. You are flame, Ruby, and fire can either be free or it will be smothered. The last thing I want…” His voice broke, and the sound was like a kick in my chest. “The last thing I want is to smother you.”
I sat up and turned away fully so that my back faced him, not as a dismissal, but because I needed the space. I didn’t want to think about how right he was. His hand came out and smoothed my back, first pushing my hair out of the way, then touching the base of my neck, his fingers lingering over each vertebra on the way down.
I turned back to him and grabbed his hand, pressing my lips to it, then resting my forehead against his knuckles. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
He twisted so that his fingers touched my cheek and my lips rested in his palm. After a minute, he took a shuddering breath.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said softly, “but I’m so tired. I just… I can’t bear much more of this.”
I knew he was injured and sore and exhausted, but it still hurt to be pushed away. I had to be mature enough to leave him. To stop begging him, in all my subtle and not-so-subtle ways, to give me reasons to stay. If I backed down now, I doomed us all with my cowardice.
But I couldn’t help asking quietly, “If—when I come back, will there be any place for me? With you?”
His voice was broken granite. “Always.”
Emotion filled my chest, so much I ached with it. I couldn’t ask for more than that.
So I gave his hand a harsh, almost bruising kiss, stood, turned, and walked to the door. I didn’t let myself look back. I knew I wasn’t that strong. It felt like lead weights had been tied to my feet. I stepped from the room, shut the door, and moved carefully down the hallway, feeling as if I’d left behind some vital and irreplaceable part of myself in the room.
The sky was gray outside the windows. The light that flowed into the hallway was gray. Even my skin, when I looked at my hand that still wore the ring, looked a sickly gray.
But the ruby in the ring shone as if the very heart of fire lived inside of it. And my heart gave a struggling little pulse of heat in reply.
SIX