He kisses me, cautious and uncertain: He hasn’t had much practice. His lips are shy, timid, and the kiss is soft as a whisper, short as a sigh.
“Was that good enough?” he asks, worried as he pulls away.
“Perfect,” I say, but not nearly enough for my greedy heart.
I steal the second kiss; the third is mutual. North follows my lead and I lead him through four, five, six, and seven until it doesn’t matter anymore, all that matters is the way his hands fold against my hips and the way his lips part beneath my tongue and the way his breath catches when I trace the gaunt lines of his body as it presses eager into mine.
Skin is the perfect conductor and I devour the secrets painted across his, ignoring the warning spread of heat as his poison seeps back into my body at the places where we overlap: fingertips, wrists, his mouth to my throat as he murmurs foreign words against my skin. Fire ignites in my veins and it’s perfect, this kiss, this feeling, like a satisfied quiet that fills my soul after months of silent screaming.
Beneath our shared desire is the rhythmic trumpet of our hearts. Mine thunders like a roar of water but his is no more than an echo half a beat behind, hollow as footsteps through a mountain. All at once, the taste of blood floods my mouth and North draws back, eyes wide as he presses a hand to his chest. Magic glows silver through the fabric of his shirt—the spell that guards his heart.
But my own heart sinks when I realize what’s happening.
The edges have started turning black.
Twenty-Four
EVER THE GENTLEMAN, NORTH USES stones he finds scattered around the wagon to excise some of the poison now spreading through my body, spreading through his. It hurts, as promised.
I welcome the pain.
North works silently, head bowed, and I bite the inside of my cheek, wondering if I should apologize or if that would only make it worse. His hands shake by the time he’s done, and he pockets the poisoned rocks, avoiding my eyes.
You promised me, Thaelan accuses at the back of my head. I want to protest, to defend my honor: I haven’t stolen anything.
But I have. I’ve stolen the Prince of Avinea’s only defense, the careful guard he’s made of his heart. As someone who’s taught herself how to fight, to deflect, to be the last one standing, I recognize the moment the fight turns against you. In kissing me, North allowed his heart to be weak and his desire to become a map for the poison to follow. If it moves any further before he repairs the spell, he could turn hellborne and he won’t be able to stop it.
I asked for a kiss and it could kill him.
“It’s not your fault,” North says at length. His voice is husky, rattled; it startles me. “I swore my heart to a higher purpose a long time ago. And anything—anyone—who threatened that purpose had to be excised long before they could take root in my blood.” He looks at me, through me. “Your strength was my weakness, Miss Locke. The fault is entirely my own.”
I don’t answer, staring numbly out the door.
North edges around me, rummaging through the spill of drawers from his apothecary’s chest. “You’ve done nothing wrong,” he says, sliding supplies and several rocks into his bag. “It didn’t get far; the damage is minimal.”
“Having a heart is not a weakness,” I say softly.
“A weak heart breaks, a broken heart bleeds, and blood can be poisoned.” North slams a drawer back into place before exhaling softly. “That is how a king becomes a coward and how a country becomes a graveyard.”
I worry the edge of the table with my thumb, but as the silence stretches, I look up to see its source. North watches me, desire warring with self-recrimination, his swollen hand clutching the strap of his bag so tightly the knuckles are white. If I asked, he would kiss me again.
If I asked, he would risk falling.
This is not the North I know, fierce and unflinching with a duty forged by blood. This is the North who would choose me over Merlock.
So I must choose Merlock over him.
I back toward the door. “I’ll get the horse,” I mumble. Without waiting for a reply, I turn and thunder down the stairwell, grateful for the cold night air to bite color into my cheeks, to jolt me back to my senses. What was I thinking? What was I doing? The poison runs through my blood too: Kissing North could just as easily kill me as it could kill him. My life might not be worth much, but there’s still Cadence to consider. No one else will fight for her the way I would.
On impulse, I rock my head back to the stars, needing their weight to pin me back into place. Only clouds tonight, but the sky is full of gold colors thrown out by the Burn.
And something closer. Torches.
The hellborne.
They approach on horseback, Baedan in the lead. Her bone white hair streams behind her as she urges her horse faster, teeth bared against the night, flanked by half a dozen brutes dressed in plated armor that covers their chests and exposes their arms. Each one carries a torch or a weapon that looks as if it was pulled from the walls of Alistair’s execution room.
Swearing, I unhitch the horse and haul myself onto its back, calling for North. He appears, features shadowed. When he sees Baedan, he grabs Darjin and runs, passing Darjin into my arms before he swings himself up behind me. We’re barely settled before he kicks the horse into motion.
Someone shouts behind us and North swears, veering the horse hard to the left to avoid a blast of hot, indigo-colored magic. We move off the road and aim for the swelling foothills, but there are no easy paths and we’re not nearly fast enough. Another blast of light knocks the horse off its feet and we hit the ground hard, a tangle of arms and legs and howling tiger. Darjin bolts out of my arms as the horse rights itself with a whinny of protest, disappearing ahead of us.
“Go!” North pushes me away as he staggers to his feet, wincing with pain. White threads of magic begin spooling along his fingertips as he turns toward Baedan.
I grab him by the back of his coat, yanking him behind a rock. “There are a thousand girls like me in the world,” I say, “but only one Prince of Avinea. Supply and demand, your majesty! Don’t be stupid!”
Still holding his coat, I start pulling him through the labyrinth of channels and valleys, buying us distance.
“We can’t run forever,” says North.
“But we can reach higher ground,” I counter. “And we can make her come to us.”
“You have a plan?”
“My plan was to run,” I admit, “but since that didn’t work, this will have to suffice.”
Another crash of magic splinters a rock above us. North pulls me under the protection of his arms until the fragments have settled before we continue, winding further from the road, deeper into the lava fields.