Page 129 of Of Sword & Silver

Still.

Still, I would not take it back, I would not trade it.

I still possess enough of my mortal soul to know that I am weak enough to do it again, should she let me.

“Where are you going?” she asks sleepily, her red-blonde lashes fluttering as she stares up at me.

“I was going to make a fire. You need to eat.”

“Come back to me,” she says, yawning and patting the blanket beside her. “Let’s stay like this until morning.”

I hesitate, knowing I should distance myself from her, that I am only making things harder for both of us.

Kyrie smiles at me, though, so soft and trusting, and all my defenses crumble.

I have done my best to hate her, to keep her away—but the truth is, it’s only made me love her more.

I curl myself around her soft, mortal body and I breathe her in, holding her until we both fall asleep again.

The clouds are dispersing by the time I wake again, whisps of white against a topaz winter sky. A lone scarlet cardinal hops from rock to rock, peering this way and that.

The direcat’s waded into the river and I watch him for a long moment as he waits for an unsuspecting fish.

Kyrie stretches out next to me, making a quiet sleepy noise that tugs at my heart.

Tugs at it, and threatens to shatter it in the still of morning.

That’s exactly what I’ll do to her, after all.

I get up, making sure to tuck the blanket in tightly around her, and set about making a campfire. My own stomach growls and I’m sure the mortal woman who holds my soul in her small fingers is likewise hungry.

Between preparing a meal for us, I steal glances at her. The spill of her wild red curls across the grey blanket, the slash of peach lips against her freckled face.

Before long, she sits up, blinking at me and sniffing the air thoughtfully.

“Hi,” she says, the shyest I’ve ever heard her.

As if I didn’t spend the night lapping between her thighs. “Good morning, my Kyrie,” I tell her.

The blush that colors her cheeks at the words splits my heart in two.

Sola’s curse on that chalice was a clever one, her vengeance colder and more calculated than even I could be.

There is only one way forward, though, and the dies of fate have been cast.

47

KYRIE

Lazy beams of sun dance across the icy surface of the River Blanst. The wintery afternoon light is pale and too harsh all at once, amplified by the water and the lack of leaves on the trees all around.

I expected things to be different.

I feel different.

Where there was an itching hurt, now I look at the Fae male across the fire and feel something like hope kindling.

He’s distant, though, distant and cold as the occasional snowflake drifting onto my cheek, unexpected and soft. It shouldn’t hurt as much as it does, pain lancing into the soft place he made inside my heart.

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