Page 281 of Alchemised
Her breath caught inside her lungs as she struggled, trying to hold herself together, overcome by the terror that she would break apart. She couldn’t.
If she broke, there would never be anyone to pick up the pieces.
“I can’t—” she finally gasped out.
“Helena.” Kaine’s lips brushed across her cheek and temple, his breath ragged. “You get to have this. You’re allowed to feel good things. Don’t be alone. Have this with me.”
He pulled her leg up with one arm, deepening and shifting the angle, drawing the tension higher, and crushed their bodies together, kissing her.
Her eyes shot open.
She stared up at him as her whole world shattered into shards of silver.
“Oh gods—” She sobbed the words out. Her fingernails sank into his arms. “Oh—oh—oh …”
She came apart under him, and he watched every moment of it.
As she lay panting, trying to catch her breath, his speed increased. Gripping her closer, tighter, his expression going tense. When he came, his mask slipped. He met her eyes for a moment before he buried his face against her shoulder, and she saw all the heartbreak in him.
Afterwards he held her close, not letting go.
She looked up. He was watching her, his expression distant, his emotions carefully hidden away.
She reached up and ran a finger along his cheek, looking for any trace of that boy who’d first greeted her at the Outpost, but there was so little of him remaining. Even his hair was all silver now.
“I think I’ve nearly memorised you,” she said. “Especially your eyes. I think I learned to read them first.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, and he caught her hand, capturing it against his chest.
“I memorised yours, too,” he said after a moment, and then sighed, looking away. “I should have known—the moment I looked into your eyes, I should have known I would never win against you.”
She gave a small smile, struggling to stay awake, afraid it might all fade away if she did. “I’ve always thought my eyes were my best feature.”
“One of them,” he said quietly.
CHAPTER 52
Aprilis 1787
WHEN HELENA WOKE, SHE FOUND HERSELF IN a large bed, in a large room, and through the windows, the Novis Mountains were arrayed around them, gilded by a golden sunrise.
She was tangled in juniper-scented sheets and wrapped up in Kaine’s arms, and she had no memory of how she’d gotten there.
She glanced around the room again. From the angle of the city, she could tell she was on the West Island. Probably one of the towers so immense they often disappeared into the clouds.
She’d always imagined Kaine on an estate or in one of the old houses in the city. Why would he be somewhere like this?
He lay, arms wrapped possessively around her as though he were keeping her from being stolen, features relaxed in sleep. She studied him.
What had she done?
Kaine Ferron was a dragon, like his family before him. Possessive to the point of self-annihilation. Isolated and deadly, and now he held her in his arms as if she were his. The temptation to give in, to let him have her, and to love him for it terrified her.
Her need to love people and her desperate longing for them to love her back—she had given that up, locked it away and buried it, giving its place to the coldness of logic, realism, and the necessary choices of war. This could only lead to ruin.
She had to be gone before he woke.
She tried to slip away as she had before, but this time his eyes snapped open. He pulled her back immediately but then caught sight of her terrified expression.
