Page 133 of Of Sword & Silver

The Sword… the Sword is Hrakan.

“How?” I ask.

The room spins and the Sword—Hrakan—puts his arm around my waist.

“Are you still willing to partake in the ritual?” he intones, the air around us thick with latent, powerful magic. White vapor rises from the cold water on the floor and my teeth begin to chatter. “Are you willing to seal your fate, Kyrie Ilinus, Sola’s sworn and silver tongue?”

I am afraid.

Don’t let your fear dictate your reality, I told him, just last night. He’s still mine. I’m still his, at least in this moment.

I am a liar, but I can tell the truth, too.

“Yes,” I say, mustering a serenity I’m not sure I feel. “I am willing.” I take a deep breath, speaking the greatest truth of all. “I trust you.”

He takes my hand, kissing the Crown of Sola where it nestles on my fourth finger. My heart wrenches at the sadness in his eyes.

“Kyrie,” he says, darkness beginning to eddy around my knees, blotting out the white. “The curse on the chalice. It bound you to me. Only one sworn to Sola, one with all her gifts, could drink from it.”

“And now we’re going to break the curse, right—” I pause, unable to bring myself to call him Hrakan. The god of death holds my hand. “Aren’t we?”

Totally normal.

“The curse will be broken,” he says slowly. “You made me swear an oath, remember? A mortal convincing a god to swear to her.” He smiles at me, and it’s so full of affection my heart slows, my racing pulse returning to normal. “I don’t think that has ever been done before.”

“Well,” I drawl, raising an eyebrow. “You would know, oh great and terrible god of death and time.”

The dimple I love flashes in his face before sorrow and trepidation wash it away once more. One hand sits at my waist, at the belt of daggers I foolishly brought with me, thinking I needed them when the god of death walked at my side.

“The curse wasn’t just that you and I would be bound together,” he continues. His jaw twitches and he twirls one of my red curls around his finger. “It was that to save you, I would have to do the unthinkable.”

“Laugh at a joke?” I ask, uneasy again at the way he’s staring at me. Watching me.

“That too, though that isn’t part of the curse.”

“So glad to have been a great influence on you.” I make myself smile through my jangling nerves. The black mist creeping over my thighs isn’t helping.

But this is the Sword.

I know him. I trust him.

I exhale my fear.

“The curse is that I would love you, Kyrie Silver Tongue. That the chalice would bring me the one mortal I should hate the most, one sworn to my greatest enemy, Sola, and that I would love her anyway.”

“You love me?” My voice sounds higher than before, and emotion tightens my chest.

“I love you,” he tells me fiercely, “more than all the stars in the night sky. More than the ocean with its bottomless depths could understand.”

Intense.

“Lucky me,” I say, falling back on old habits and winking up at him, unable to keep from touching that silver-white hair, the dark stubble on his jaw.

“I love you, Kyrie, though I tried as hard as I could to resist it. To resist you, to resist this moment, to resist Sola’s curse on us both.”

“Why is it a curse?” I ask softly. He closes his eyes as I stroke his cheek. “Why is our love a curse?”

He pushes his forehead against mine tenderly—then kisses me, so hard it takes my breath away.

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