Page 114 of Slaying the Shadow Prince
Hadn’t she known? He’d practically told her before.I’m yours, he’d said. But the shock on her face told him otherwise, told him he should have told her he loved her the second the all-consuming feeling had bloomed in his broken chest.
Ignoring the others, he grasped her hands in his. ‘Since the moment I met you, I have felt like I was soaring. With you there is no ground beneath my boots, no rail to hold on to, and for a time there, I fought it with all my might… But no more. I’ve let go. And Wildfire, it’s more than I could have ever imagined. With you, I didn’t fall in love. I rose amid it, stronger than ever before.’ Talemir took a trembling breath, baring his soul like he never had. ‘I love you against all reason.’
Drue stared at him, her fingers loose in his.
‘If it’s not enough,’ he managed, bowing to unsheathe the dagger in his boot and, on one knee, pressing it into her hands, ‘then carve out my heart, Wildfire. It’s yours.’
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Drue
Awinged Warsword was on his knees for her, offering her his heart.
In front of everyone.
Illuminated by the glowing embers of the campfire, his handsome face was ravaged by devastation, his hazel eyes lined with silver.
As though sensing that what was unfolding before them was less of a threat and more of a private moment, the crowd dispersed, leaving her alone with Talemir.
Drue wanted to rage at him for abandoning her, for breaking her into a million pieces, but he was here now, and there was no question – he had made it clear: his shadow-infested heart was hers.
She exhaled slowly, the realisation dawning on her.
Her own heart, with its own darkness, was his as well.
Drue pulled Talemir to his feet. The warrior towered once more above her, his head bowed to her.
‘You’ll take no more of that tonic,’ she told him, searching his face.
‘No,not a drop more,’ he vowed.
‘You need to accept every part of yourself.’
‘I do,’ he murmured.
The same thing that had once terrified her now liberated her – this thing between them was real, and it was as vast and unfathomable as the sea. And just as formidable.
With Talemir by her side, she could take on the world.
Drue brought his face to hers and kissed him, his bruised lips hot and swollen against hers, his eager mouth opening to her, allowing her tongue to sweep in and brush his, sending a current of longing through her.
But she pulled back, peering at his handsome, battered features. ‘I love you, too,’ she whispered to him and him alone.
Talemir loosed a tight breath, and then he moved. Suddenly, his hands were in her hair and he was kissing her fiercely, crushing his body to hers.
Tears pricked Drue’s eyes. Her chest was swelling, teeming with everything she felt for this man. Love didn’t happen once, she realised. It happened every day, in little moments, in the quiet gaps between grand words, in the lingering touches, in the hope it promised in the dark. Love was something that breathed and expanded, that was made and remade, again and again, reforged only to become stronger.
Drue melted into Talemir, her palms running up his chest, around his shoulders, where they grazed the soft membrane of his wings.
Talemir answered her with another kiss, hot and heady, full of desperate need, his hands sliding to her waist, to the curve of her —
‘Do you mind?’ Adrienne’s sharp voice splintered the moment.
Reluctantly, they broke apart.
Adrienne and Wilder stood a few feet away, looking unimpressed, both with their arms crossed over their chests.
‘In case you’ve forgotten,’ Adrienne quipped, ‘we’ve got a rescue to plan and a lair to destroy…’
