Page 172 of Bane of the Wild Hunt

She seemed to know my thoughts because she turned to face me more directly on the stone we were sitting on. “Please don’t think like that,” she beseeched gently.

“Why not? Because that would insult his memory?”

A little voice in the back of my head whispered that it was time to stop now before I said too much, but I could not seem to reel in my emotions.

“I feel so much pressure to dosomethingworthwhile with his sacrifice,” I said, finally speaking aloud the truth that had weighed on my soul for centuries. “And it makes me fuckinghatemyself that I can resent him even a little for it after everything he did for me. How the fuck am I supposed to make anything of what he gave me when I feel like a… like a curse. To everyone around me. I cause nothing but pain and suffering. Like a disease.”

Relief and regret went to war inside me and began to burn a hole in me the second the words were out of my stupid mouth. I might have yanked my hand out of hers and put some space between us, but Amira seemed utterly unperturbed by the disclosure or my anger. She sat next to me in silence for a long moment while she processed my confession with her eyes on our entwined hands.

Waiting for her to speak was torturous.

“All this pain you carry must be so overwhelming that it would be impossible not to feel like it is… infecting the world around you,” she mused finally.

She raised her head, our eyes connecting like magnets fusing together, and I was unable to respond to her.

“What? Did you think I wouldn’t get it?” she guessed with a slight smile as if she were amused to have shocked me so thoroughly.

“You know that feeling?” I asked her breathlessly.

“The one where you cannot help feeling like you suck the air out of the room just by walking into it? I know it,” Amira assured me with another gentle smile.

It was as if she had obliterated all my thoughts, and all I could do was stare at her.

Eventually she lowered her eyes down to my knuckles, turning my mangled hand over to examine them while I continued to stare at her like a daft mute. Absorbing her every lash, freckle, and pore. The dimples in her cheeks. The strands of her hair drifting over her slender shoulders. The staccato of her pulse leaping faster in her neck the longer I spent staring down at her.

“Do you have to hit things to release the anger?”

“Yes,” I answered without removing my eyes from her. The moonlight gleamed on her fair skin, illuminating her, and it was so breathtakingly beautiful.

“And does it help you?”

“Temporarily.”

“I found that talking like this with someone else really helped me. Just having the chance to say it all out loud. Even if the person had no advice to give,” she admitted, and I realized we had somehow drifted closer when she shrugged and brushed my arm with her shoulder. I sensed there was more she wanted to say, so I waited the way she had done for me. “You know that Riordan was stuck in his animal form when I met him? I thought he was genuinely an animal. One that seemed to have some understanding of my emotions, but no capacity to judge me or ever tell anyone else. So I… unburdened myself with him.”

“You mean you told him everything?”

“Everything! Like… the things that you just do not tell other people. Things that you shouldn’t even say out loud,” she stressed with all seriousness, and I couldn’t help it when she raised those wide, earnest eyes to me. I laughed, and aftergetting even just a little of the twisted darkness off my chest, it felt… shockingly good.

“Yeah… But I guess it worked out for me in the end,” Amira pointed out. She smirked, but there was a wistful look in her eyes as if she were remembering the days she had spent with our king in her world.

“You really do… love him,” I noted tentatively.

“Of course, I do! Why do you think I am here in this place that does not particularly like me?”

Her words immediately brought to mind the way she looked standing behind that table in the Rookery with an immense line of people waiting to see her.

“This place needs you. More than you might realize.”

She was quiet for so long that I glanced up and found that I was now the one being stared at.

“It’s growing on me,” she admitted with a playful wink before she looked down at my knuckles again. I thought she might be doing that whenever she was feeling shy. Like she needed something else to focus on.

“Why did Helena react like that when I touched you?” she asked me suddenly, glancing up again. “She seemed to think that you would be really upset or something.”

I looked out at the city lights beneath us to avoid her eyes while I tried to decide how much to tell her. She had not yet balked at anything I told her, and there was part of me that wanted to take advantage of it. But I was also afraid to push too hard or too fast and risk losing her.

Although if she was not going to be able to handle the things I wanted to tell her, then I preferred to know sooner rather than later.

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