Page 89 of Burning Crowns

‘He was threatening you,’ said Tor, casually rolling his sleeves to his elbows.‘I saw him pocket a knife at dinner. I was afraid of what he might do with it in his addled state.’

‘Oh. Right.’ Wren looked at her hands. ‘I just didn’t want you to think there was anything … that we were … or that he was trying to kiss me.’

‘I would have knocked him out for that, too.’ Wren looked up, struck by the storm in his eyes. He had surrendered his stony facade, and now she could see the pain beneath it. The betrayal. Theanger.‘I should have knocked him out in the baths for touching you as if you were his.’

Wren’s breath shallowed. ‘We didn’t kiss in the baths.’

‘Just the blizzard, then.’ The waterfall roared in the sudden silence. Wren stared at Tor. He stared back, letting her see the accusation in his gaze.Stars, heknew. He had known all this time.

Wren opened her mouth, closed it. She couldn’t find the words, or the breath.

‘Anika told me when I returned from Carrig some months ago,’ he went on. ‘I should have turned around and rode home right then.’ He laughed mirthlessly. ‘But like a fool, I stayed, hoping I would somehow see you again. Hoping that the fates would draw us back together.’ He shook his head, his smile rueful. ‘But, it seems, fate has no interest in me. Only you and him.’

‘That isn’t fate, Tor. It’s a curse.’

‘Yes, it is, Wren. All of it.’

He turned to go.

‘Wait!’ She leaped to her feet. ‘You can’t just turn around and leave.’

He stilled, eyes flashing. ‘You can’t command me.’

‘I can in this mountain,’ she shot back. ‘In this land. And I’m not done speaking.’

He came towards her, his voice a growl. ‘So, speak, Wren.’

Wren swallowed the sudden dryness in her throat. Tor was more beast in this place than she had ever known him to be, and yet the sight of him seething and practically shirtless stirred in her a desperate need to be closer to him. To stand in the headiness of his alpine scent and meet him, glare for glare.

She stared up at him, so tall and broad and immovable in his anger, and gave voice to her own feelings, messy as they were. ‘It’s true that I kissed Alarik in that blizzard. We kissed each other,’ she admitted. ‘But it was no fairy tale. It wasn’t some stolen moment written in the stars. It was a storm of pain and grief and fear and confusion.’

Tor weathered the confession in stony silence, though a muscle flickered in his jaw.

‘My grandmother was dead. Oonagh killed her right in front of me and smiled when it was done. Then the world came crumbling down around me.’ Wren’s eyes welled at the memory, her grief catching in her throat. ‘The pain of that loss was so sudden, so jagged, I swore it was shearing my heart in two. I didn’t want to go on, Tor. I didn’t want tolivepast that moment.’

Wren was crying now, but she didn’t care. The words were crowding on the back of her tongue and she had to free them. He had to hear them.

His brow furrowed. He tried to look away from the sight of her pain, but she grabbed his jaw, holding his gaze.

‘You weren’t there that day. I was alone, and out of my mind. I was adrift in this vast sea of maddening grief and Alarik was my life raft. He was the only person I could reach for,and when I flung my hand out, he reached back and caught it. Hesavedme that day. He gave me the strength to go on.’

Tor closed his eyes. ‘So, you kissed him.’

‘Yes,’ said Wren, her voice ragged. ‘Hate me if you want. Yell at me. Curse me, for stars’ sake! Just please don’t walk away from me again. Don’t leave it like this.’ She grabbed the collar of his shirt, shaking him until he opened his eyes to her. ‘I’d rather have your anger than your silence.’

He removed her hands from his shirt, freeing himself from her grasp. ‘I’m not angry at you, Wren,’ he said, taking a step back, and then another, until he stood before the waterfall, distractingly damp and utterly exasperated. His gaze found hers, a streak of lightning cutting through the storm. ‘I’m in love with you.’

Wren blinked.

‘And it’s torture.’ A cold wind rushed in between them, unsettling the strands along his face. He raked them back. ‘Thisis torture.’

Torture.The word echoed back at her from deep inside the mountain.

She had stilled at Tor’s confession, her hands still hovering in mid-air, waiting for him to take them. He did not. ‘And I know torture, Wren. I grew up in the wilds of Gevra. I went to war as a boy. I fought beasts far larger than I was, and buried soldiers much younger.’

Wren’s eyes filled with tears. How could a confession of love sound so bleak; how could desire taste so sour? How could he compare his feelings for her – their feelings for each other – to the horrors of war? Now here they stood, both shivering and wounded, and neither one of them was the better for it.‘What a cruel comparison,’ she whispered. ‘How could love ever be torture?’

‘Because love is being stuck here in this faraway place, watching you watch him,’ said Tor. ‘Watching youwanthim. Watching him caress your hair. Watching him touch your skin. Like—’ He stopped short, gazing into the pool at her reflection. ‘He doesn’t deserve you, Wren.’

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