Red leaned back in her chair, arms crossed. “I told you. It works better when we’re close.”
“Exactly how close do you need me, Redarys?”
It stopped her for a moment, mouth parted, possible answers roaring through her head like flames with fresh kindling. She settled for “Closer than that.”
They stared at each other across the room, the air between them warm and waiting. With a ragged sigh, Eammon moved closer, until he stood just out of reach. “Better?”
She wanted to say no. She remembered him yesterday in the forest, kissing her like she was warmth in winter before pushing her away, and by all the Kings and all the shadows, that was the closeness she wanted.
But she nodded and turned to the tree limb.
Her power wouldn’t cooperate. Trying to grasp it felt like trying to hold hands with water. Red couldn’t make it bloom, couldn’t do anything but chase it fruitlessly. With a frustrated growl, she opened her eyes to the still-dead branch, fingers curling on the wood of the table. “It’s not working.”
“It worked just fine before.”
“You were closer before.”
She clenched her teeth shut as soon as she’d said it, but it hung like an ax and couldn’t be taken back. Eammon said nothing, though she could hear his breath, the rattle of it in and out of root-tangled lungs.
“Is it emotional?” The attempt at brusqueness fell flat and made his voice only rougher, stoking the heat in her stomach. “The closeness you need, I mean. Or . . . or physical?”
“Both.” Red closed her eyes, knowing this was giving in, knowing she didn’t care. “Both seem to help.”
Her eyes stayed closed, but the atmosphere around her shifted as he moved forward, warm and charged as the air before a thunderstorm. A breath of hesitation before he brushed away her loose hair, put his warm hand on the nape of her neck.
“I won’t be there.” He said it like an apology. “I can’t always be there, Red.”
She knew it. He was tied to this damn wood, mired in it. The sentinels trapped him as well as any shadow-creature, any wicked king, and he wouldn’t be there in Valleyda to calm her chaos with his closeness. The more Red practiced control, the more she might be able to re-create it without him, but that wasn’t what this was about, and they both knew it.
This was about stalling. About taking the closeness they could get.
“Being here now is enough,” Red murmured.
The tips of his fingers curled against the roots of her hair.
The power in her center gathered and steadied, like this was what it wanted all along. It was simple to grasp it now, simple to turn it to her will.
The branch on the table had a muted golden glow when she opened her mind to the Wilderwood, stars behind clouds. Just enough for her piece of it, that thin thread winding through her, to connect to and command. As she arched her fingers, she saw it grow, the twigs stretching past their painted beginnings.
When her eyes opened, the branch was somewhat bigger, though not by much. Maybe an inch of space had appeared between the silver bands and the main bough.
Eammon moved abruptly away, taking his fingers from her neck, striding toward the window. He ran one hand through his unbound hair before shoving them both in his pockets. “There,” he said, almost in a rush. “It’s done.”
Red bit her lip, mind churning fire-laced thought. His mouth on her throat, her hair in his hands, tree bark against her back as he pressed against her center. He’d thought it a mistake, but she hadn’t, and now she was leaving. Even though she was coming back— dammit, she was coming back— she’d still heard that finality in his voice last night. The thing he’d murmured when he thought she was asleep.
Maybe you should.
It angered her, that he had room for doubt, to think she’d want to linger anywhere that wasn’t close enough to see that faint scar on his cheek. Room to think they were the same people who’d faced off in a library on her twentieth birthday what felt like lifetimes ago, room to think the space between them hadn’t fully and irrevocably changed.
Red stood, her chair scraping backward across the floor. “I can do more.”
He stiffened.
“I’m capable of more than that. You know it.” Red propped her hips against the edge of the table, fingers curling into the wood, and the next words were plea and invitation and challenge all at once, rough with want. “Help me do more.”
His turning seemed to take ages. Eammon’s arms fell from crossed to hang by his side, fingers already curved like they held something. The first step was tentative, then he strode across the room like it was a battle march, face determined. His hands hit the table on either side of her hips, tensed enough for her to trace the tendons.