I’d almost killed Ella. For a few seconds, I had.
The knowledge crashed into me, a boulder dropped from above.
All for the sake of a hug.
How had I been so stupid? So selfish? So… uncontrolled.
“Get out.”
“It’s all right.” Ella smiled the same smile that had been so infectious earlier. “I mean, it hurt like hells, but, I feel fine now.”
I would never have seen that smile again if…
The low-level hum against my skin intensified.
“Get out.”
“Kat.” Perry reached out before snatching her hand back and giving me an apologetic smile. “I know you’re afraid, but—”
Everything hazed purple.
Perry’s eyes widened.
I scrambled for the sitting room, crying, “Get out!”
45
Bastian
I burst into the antechamber. Coats littered the floor, and amongst them glinted the lid of Kat’s potion bottle pendant.
As soon as Rose had appeared at the door to her and Faolán’s home, face tearstained, I’d known something was very wrong. Thank the Stars, Ella was alive and apparently fine. I’d left Rose in Faolán’s arms and raced back to the palace. A guard was fetching Asher to have him check on Ella, while I’d sprinted down the corridors to get back here.
My chest was too tight, and not because of the run.
“Kat?” I called into the dim living room. No sign of her, though the scent of her magic hung in the air, thick and sweet.
I tried her bedroom next, then her bathroom, half expecting to find her throwing up in the toilet. I even checked my room, thinking perhaps she’d be curled up in my bed, sobbing. She wasn’t.
It was only when I went into the dining room that I found her in the midst of her party decorations. Afternoon sun spilled through the window, lighting up a small shape at the wall’s base—knees hugged tight, face pressed against them.
“Kat.” I sighed out her name, unspeakably relieved to find her. The fear she’d run had been a tight knot in my belly that only now untied. If she was here, I could help her. If she’d gone…
“I poisoned Ella. I—”
“I know.” Crouching before her, I placed my hand on her head. That only made her pull tighter. “It’s me. You can’t hurt me, remember.”
Her shoulders shook, and I couldn’t tell if the sound she made was a sob or bitter laughter. My shadows caressed her hands and feet. Eventually, she lifted her head, pushing into my touch.
“I nearly killed her, Bastian.” The desperate look she gave was a sledgehammer, breaking every part of me.
I had to swallow and take my time stroking her hair before I could pull myself back together and reply. “You didn’t, though. Rose told me. You gave her the antidote, and Asher’s checking her over now. She’s all right. Everything is going to be all right.”
“It isn’t. You call magic a gift, but this is a curse. I’m never going to be able to touch anyone. I’m never going to be able to control it.” Her chest heaved, and her lip wavered for a second before she clenched her jaw and drew herself up. “If there’s no cure… I’m going to have to live alone for fear of hurting someone.”
Despite her straight back and set jaw, I saw how fragile she was beneath it, how ready to fall apart. I wanted to take her to my workroom and try every trick and technique I knew to put her back together.
“She hugged me. And I wanted it so badly, I didn’t…” She shook her head, gaze dropping as she frowned. “I didn’t even realise. I forgot about my poison. When she arrived in Tenebris and I had to tell her she couldn’t touch me, she looked like I’d punched her the face. And it felt like that to me too.”
“I know.” It was a shitty, useless response, but I had no other words.
I’d seen her reaction and Ella’s. I’d seen how hard it was for Kat to push away Vespera. It had broken my fucking heart.
Kat stared at her hands, clenching and unclenching her stained fingers. “My skin feels wrong and tight, like it needs life the same way plants need water. People aren’t meant to be alone, are they?”
“You need touch. We all do. Come here.” I pulled her against me, delighting in how perfectly she buried her face in the crook between my shoulder and neck. I skimmed my hands over her back and pulled her to her feet, so I could hold her full length against my body. The hairs on the back of her neck rose and her arms tightened around me.
Heart beating a heavy rhythm, I brushed my lips over her ear and dipped my fingertips under the edge of her dress, skimming her skin.
She drew a shaky breath against my throat, lighting up my body in a dozen different places. “But…”
“This isn’t…” I swallowed, edging closer to a lie. “I’m just holding you. It’s only touch. Not breaking any rules.” True enough—barely. “I can’t stand the thought of you trapped in this invisible bubble, afraid to go near anyone. Let me do this for you, Katherine,” I murmured against her hair, high on her springtime scent. “You’re dying of thirst.”
She lifted her head, eyelids heavy. “And you have water.”
I inclined my head, inches away from a lie. Because whatever I told myself, that wasn’t the only reason for this. The main reason, yes. But not the only one.
She pulled her hair over her shoulder and nodded.
In silence, I unbuttoned the back of her dress, inch by frustrating inch, letting my fingertips trace circles and spirals over her spine as it was revealed. Once it was open to her waist, I slid my hands under the silk and pulled her tight against me. Her warm, soft skin was a wonder I could lose myself in. The only thing I could possibly like more was the little sigh she gave as she melted into my hold.
I was so lost in every touch, every scent, every sound of her heavy breathing, I didn’t realise her hands were skimming up my chest until she reached my nipple, stealing my breath.
“Katherine,” I murmured, not quite an admonishment, but low enough to make her questing fingers fall still. With a gentle shadow, I guided her hand away and pulled it around my back. “This isn’t for me.”
She lifted her head again, lips parted, and I was ready to pull away if she tried to kiss me. “Is that what you told yourself when you didn’t come in Albion?”
Of course she realised. She was no fool.
“Yes.”
“And when you told me about the coup, you deliberately painted the worst version of it so I’d think you were a selfish traitor who killed his father for his own advancement.”
To hear her say it hurt—physically hurt. Yes, preventing the coup had improved my position—made me the Night Queen’s Shadow—but that had never been my motivation.
“You neglected to mention the lives you saved, the war you prevented.”
Fuck. She saw. She saw everything.
Her eyes were tired, her voice dreamy, but she drove right to the centre of who I was.
Hands on her waist, I turned her. Safer without her looking at me. I caught my breath and managed to answer, “Yes.”
The dim light picked out the curve that swept from her back into her waist and out over her backside, and I ate up the sight as I peeled off my shirt.