Page 85 of House of Embers
“We should be getting married instead of having the coronation.”
“You know why we can’t.”
“Those reasons are bullshit,” he snapped. “They’re the reason the House of Shadows has fallen in the first place.”
“You can’t change everything at once.”
He breathed out. “I know. I just get so angry sometimes.”
“I would have thought last night would have relaxed you.”
He smirked at her. “Well, yes. New morning means new anxieties.”
The joke had landed, but there was something dark in his eyes. Something else.
Kerrigan took his hand. “Is this about Iris?”
He flinched at the sound of her name. Iris had enslaved him and used him as a weapon. His power had not been his own, and he had murdered more people than Kerrigan was sure even she knew about.
“You don’t have to do this,” she reminded him. “This is your choice.”
“And if I do not, then I give up my throne.”
She sighed, jumping onto the stone next to him. She ran her fingers over the first Fae sarcophagus. “Would that be so bad?”
He gasped out a laugh. “Considering we need a standing army.”
“We have the dragons. That might be sufficient.”
“We’re not taking any chances.”
Kerrigan nodded as she traced the lines of the first Fae’s sword. “Have you killed anyone since the tournament?”
“No,” he said stiffly.
“Will it destroy you to do it?”
Fordham was silent a beat too long. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’ve killed. I’ve killed so many people. Even before we ever met, Kerrigan. It was never pleasant, but it was war. This is war.”
“But…”
“But what Iris did broke something inside me that I am still navigating.”
“So if you don’t want to fight today, then you don’t have to.”
“And what about the next battle?” he asked, clenching his hands. “And the one after that? I cannot run away from a fight or my duty.”
“I don’t want you to run away from what happened either though,” she said softly. It hadn’t been that long ago that he wouldn’t even tell her what had happened with Iris, that he wasn’t sure if he could even have the mating bond. She didn’t want that Fordham to return. “I want you to be safe in here.” She touched his chest.
He slid his hand over hers. “I have you now. We can weather this together.”
She kissed him and he sighed against her mouth, the bond a fire that burned between them. Neither of them was okay. Maybe they never would be again after what they’d endured at the hands of their enslavers. But they could keep going forward together.
Fordham jumped off the stone casket and held his arms out to her. She let him lift her off the stone. “I think I’ll go claim my throne now.”
“If you’re sure.”
Fordham kissed her again. “I’m ready for you to be my wife. The rest”—he waved his hand—“can keep.”
