I was too shocked to act, so I simply watched as he picked his arm out of the debris and leaned his forehead against the damaged wall, breathing deeply. I had never seen him lose so much composure.
“You don’t know how to keep him out of your head,” he continued. “You tried something once, and it worked. That doesn’t mean it’ll work every time. All Weston needs is a hint of the truth, and we’re all dead. All of us. The Klovoda can’t save you from him, he’s the Voda. They might not agree with everything he does, but they can’t control him. Nobody can.”
“The messenger put a bomb around her neck,” Noah said, his eyes on Quillan. “She had to leave.”
“Don’t you stand up for her,” Quillan snapped, pointing a finger at Noah. “You feel guilty for the way you’ve been treating her and for everything you’ve done, but don’t let that cloud your judgement. She should have told us.”
I frowned, looking between the two of them. I saw the guilt that flashed over Noah’s face before he hung his head.
“You’re angry at me,” I declared, “so be angry at me, not him.”
Quillan pulled away from the wall and stalked over to me, forcing me to fall back a step until he had me caged against the window, though not an inch of him was touching me in any way.
“I…” He worked his throat, trying to get the words out, his eyes growing darker until his pupils seemed to blend into his irises, opening a chasm fathomless enough for me to tumble through and never see the light of day again.
Fear. It took me too long to recognise the emotion, and as soon as I did, I immediately lost my fight. Quillan was scared for me; so scared that he didn’t even know how to tell me, or how to conduct himself, and that was a first.
“It’s okay,” I whispered, reaching up to touch his shoulder.
At the brush of my fingers, he pulled in a deep breath and hooked an arm around my spine, pulling me up in a hug that I was sure he had intended to be a stern sort of acknowledgement that he was glad to see me safe. I slipped my arms around his rigid shoulders, threading my fingers into the wavy strands of hair that had been cropped short to the back of his neck.
“Give us a minute,” he grumbled.
I heard the sound of the door opening and closing, and then Quillan was pulling my hands away and setting me back on my feet.
“You can’t touch me like that,” he said warily.
I frowned, shoving my hands into the pockets of the workout pants I had borrowed. He followed the movement, running his eyes over my clothing as though only just noticing that I wasn’t dressed normally.
“You stayed at Le Chateau?” he asked.
I nodded, staring at my sneakers while I waited for another lecture. “I’ll be staying there from now on. Tariq too.”
He sighed, reaching out for me again. I wanted to heed his warning and respect the distance that he was trying to establish between us, but the second he pulled me back into his arms, I was clinging to him again. He jostled me higher, his one arm banded around my back again as he caught my chin with his free hand, lifting my face up.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m feeling a little out of my element. I hate that you’re there with Weston, but I’ll worship the ground you walk on for the rest of your damned life, because you put yourself in danger to save Silas. Nobody has ever done that for him. If I didn’t love him so much… I think I would be jealous. Maybe I am. I don’t know.”
I could tell that he was about to set me down again, so I tightened my hold on him, burrowing into the warmth of his neck and drawing comfort from the way his arms tensed just enough to draw me in closer.
“I stole you, Miro. I stole all of you.” It was the first time I had acknowledged it out loud to any of them.
“We know,” he replied gently. “Silas told us.”
“I don’t deserve you.”
“We don’t deserve you either.”
“You deserve the Atmá you were born with. She probably wasn’t anything like me.” You probably wouldn’t push her away.