Page 119 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

“I can’t go back to being their prisoner.”

There’s a breath, another suddenly underwater moment, where if he waits to speak she’s not sure she’ll ever surface. It’s just them, with his eyes reflecting the light back at her, like he could sear his way into her mind.

“It’s not a set point,” Killian says, and it almost takes her a beat to consider what he’s talking about. “Some of it has to do with damage to the body. Some of it has to do with damage to ourselves. Sometimes, it's as simple as the body decaying in death before we get to it. Some…sometimes, it’s just the magic of the world being so contradictory to our survival that we get forced out.”

“I’m going to guess that’s what the college wants to know,” Chloe murmurs back.

“Well, obviously they succeeded,” Killian says, his mouth twisting. “With the ease of forcing me out they had back there.”

Before she even quite knows what her hand is doing, her fingers curl around his palm, whisper-quiet in the room.

He stares down at her hand, at the point where the two of them connect, like it’s just as puzzling for him.

He had said he feels her through his real self, through his actual skin, not the human one, so she swipes her thumb across the back of his knuckles.

Skin feels like skin to her.

His brows flash up at the contact again.

“Thank you,” she says, and watches it play across his face as he realizes she’s sincere. That she hears the vulnerability in his answer, at the trust he’s placing in her.

His hand twitches in hers, before he folds his fingers over hers, like he’s just now allowing himself the touch.

Once, in a moment that Chloe shouldn’t have overheard, Melekai and his Necromancer were chatting in a hallway, their voices too loud to know anyone was nearby. Lyra had said something funny, Melekai laughed in response—Chloe hadn’t known he could laugh until that point—before he sighed. There had been a shifting of motion, a rustle of clothing, like he had wrapped an arm around her and was leaning in, before he spoke.

Chloe had tucked herself deeper into the corner of the building, suddenly aware that she was intruding on such a small moment, but his words still burned into her mind. “Everything is more real when I touch you. The world, this body, my very self.”

With how Killian’s looking at her hand, those words echo suddenly through Chloe’s mind. At the sudden certainty that Killian, too, isn’t someone who can be touched so easily. That all of this casual contact—the hand holding, the support on her back, the kiss in the bed—just might be more than he’s ever had.

It’s a dizzying amount of power he’s placed in her, just by that little touch.

So. Of course. She pushes for more.

This time, she takes the step closer to him, moving into his space, and his breath hitches.

“For what?” he asks, almost blankly, like his brain is trying to catch between her words and her actions and latching on to the last thing she said instead.

“For answering me,” Chloe says, and, telegraphing her motions this time, giving him the space to pull back if he needs, hooks her other hand on his belt loops, pulling him ever so nearer to her. “I asked a question with significant emotional weight, and you still answered. Thank you.”

His hand settles on her hip, like this is a choreographed dance that he’s never seen but still knows intrinsically, and she can feel the heat of his touch through the fabric of her carhartts, at the small strip of skin where her shirt rides up.

“Careful, little alchemist,” he keeps saying that, but his thumb swipes across that bare sliver of skin, drawing up goosebumps.

“Or what?” Chloe breathes, and the corners of his lips tilt up as he swipes his thumb again, like he’s marveling in the sensation.

He opens his mouth to speak but no words come out.

So she waits, with just that small maddening contact on her hip, watching him. Watching as he visibly debates with himself, watches as his eyes dip from her gaze, to her collarbone, to the hand he has on her, back up to her face.

Before his eyes narrow, sudden with their suspicion, and it’s almost comical.

“You abominations have absolutely told you about this,” he says, almost complaining, like she has an unfair advantage over him. “You’re not distressed by this at all.”

She has a split second to wonder impishly, to delight in the idea that he finds this awkward, before he jerks her towards him, crushing his mouth to hers.

It’s different from the last kiss. The last one, with the tall brunette body and the rougher hands that held her gently,had been sort of a tentative exploration born out of late-night vulnerability. Of a connection both of them too tentative to fully explore, of the night before something huge and insurmountable.

And now, after they climbed the insurmountable task, when they’re both safe and he’s in a new body and she’s merely bruised, he grips her like he knows she can take it.

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