Page 49 of A Reign of Roses
My last thoughts were,Please let me be something that can fly. Please let me shift at all.
And then I leapt—
Only to feel the frantic grasp of a warm, sturdy hand around my arm…but too late. Whoever had reached down from the roof and grabbed my wrist I’d pulled down with me.
We fell rapidly, his words lost as the wind shattered in my ears.
But that touch.
That touch that never wavered—that pulled me close to him, cradling me in his arms even as we plunged, prepared to insulate my fall with his own limbs…That cedar and leather scent in my nose, those silver-ringed hands on my bare back, the dark, sable hair clouding my vision—
Kane.
PART II
TheSpark
13
Arwen
I had no time tothink as the ground surged toward us both. My heart barely pumped a full beat. But I still had my lighte, and it coursed through me on pure animal instinct—
The bubble of sun-flecked power blossomed around us just in time to cushion our fall into the shrubbery below.
We still landed with a thud, Kane’s hands around my waist and the back of my head.
My bubble fizzled quickly—far too much shock spinning in my mind—and thin sticks and leaves swallowed us whole.
Before I could utter a word around my astonishment, Kane climbed off me and pulled us both farther behind the hedges. We crouched, away from the prying eyes of soldiers drawn to the ruckus, twin breaths racing in our lungs. Tiny twigs had lodged in his dark hair and unruly beard, his face was gouged down the cheek, and his neck red and splotchy from where I’d all but strangled him with my grip—but that signature Kane half grin was undeniable in the moonlight. And those eyes, welling with tears, simmering softly on my own—
My heart gave out completely.
He must have seen it in my eyes, because he only brought a silver-clad finger to his lips as we observed the guards in shaky silence. Not a breath between the two of us as they peered at the bushes we’d nearly died atop of and decided the brief ruckus was nothing more than a fox or stray dog.
“You’d think plummeting to your death once would have been enough,” he murmured once they were out of earshot.
That voice. I’d yearned for that voice. It was even better than I’d remembered: choked raw by emotion, and yet still a deep, confident rumble. One I had once described as thunder and a caress.
When he brought his hand to my face, I realized my cheeks were wet.
Kane was here, in Solaris. Grinning at me.
I flung myself into his arms like a kite in the air. I was sure I’d topple us both farther into the bushes, but Kane only loosed a muffled groan as he held me to him tightly, steadying us both. Those massive hands spanning the length of my back was enough to set tears free like a river rushing away.
And I couldn’t help it as I cried into the spot where his neck met his shoulder. Buried myself farther into him. His scruffy beard against my cheek. Despite the Fae armor, he still smelled of leather and mint and sweat and skin. His breath was hot against the shell of my ear and my fingers twined in the strands of his dark, clean hair as I cried.
“Shh.” His words muffled against me. Those lips. That dark, bearded chin. “My love,” he murmured. “I’m here.”
I couldn’t inhale enough of him. His lips found mine in a daze of tears and I broke again. Choking out a weak cry as he kissed me so gently, so reverently, shrouded in brittle leaves and shrubbery. Akiss for all the times he couldn’t. For all the nights I’d stayed up wishing for just a minute like this. A single second of it.
Kane tipped my face up to his, angled my chin and brushed his large hands across my neck and my shoulders, dusting off leaves and thorns. Picked them carefully from my hair. Those searing quicksilver eyes shadowed as he said, “Whatever you experienced, whatever you went through, whatever made you want to…” His jaw was rigid as a glacier. “I promise, together we can—”
“I wasn’t trying to kill myself.” My voice was like gravel.
He narrowed his eyes at me as if he didn’t want to be cruel but knew that I was lying.
“Really,” I promised, pressing a hand to my cheek to dry my tears. “I was trying to fly.”
