Page 53 of Kissed By the Gods
I set the books down carefully, with more reverence than I meant to show. “I’m a terribly slow reader, though. It takes me ages to get through anything.” I turn back to him. “You’ve been hiding from me.”
He grunts and shoulders his pack again. “Right. Well. This is a conversation that can wait until I get back, and you have your books, so …” He gestures toward the door.
I don’t move.
“I need a master.”
Ryot sighs, rubbing a hand down his face. “Leina …” He drops his pack back onto the floor and sits heavily on the bed across from me. “We’ve already talked about this. There are a few men in Atherclad who?—”
I cut him off, allowing my frustration to slam against his senses. “Anyone who’s offered to train me … There’s something off about it, about them.”
“There are still men out on missions. Durnen should return soon. I can?—”
“Ryot—”
“No.” He knows what I’m about to ask, but I’ve not made it this far by giving up.
“It has to be you.”
He jerks to his feet, pacing. “Absolutely not.”
“Why not? You saw me in the ring. I would be a good student.”
He stops, turning to me. His eyes darken. “And when you die, and the goddess demands restitution from me?”
I scoff. “That’s an excuse. You know it, and I know it.”
He snaps. There’s no other word for it. In two steps, he’s on me, shoving me against the stone wall. His grip is firm, but not painful. His eyes are hard, his voice brutal.
“I’ve lost every ward I’ve ever had, Leina. Every. Single. One,” he says, and I can hear it in his voice, the way he hates himself for it. “Four of them. Young boys bright with hope and life and fight—all nothing but empty husks, their corpses sinking into the ocean that claims our dead. It’s like Kheris knows they’re mine. She waits for them. And the moment I claim them, she reaches out from the depths of the void and takes them. Not because they were weak. Not because they weren’t good enough.” His grip tightens, his fingers callused against my skin. “Because they were mine.”
His hands clench on my arms, but not in anger. It’s as if he needs something to hold onto because he’s coming apart at the seams.
“It’s not about if you’d make a good student.” He lets me go and takes a step back. With that step, he put so much more thandistance between us. He erects a wall, one I can almost see rising between us, built of grief and regret, of self-loathing and blame. “It’s about the fact that once I claim you, you’re as good as dead.”
I step closer. This isn’t only about war or survival or even the gods. This is about fate.
This thing that sizzles between us is something so much more than all of that. He sees it too—I can tell in the way his fingers twitch at his sides, the way his jaw locks like he’s bracing himself for a blow.
He can step back all he wants. I’ll keep stepping forward because I’ve never been afraid of ghosts. I’ve lived with my own for too long, carried them with me in my dreams, let them whisper to me in the dark.
Ghosts don’t scare me, but being powerless does.
“This is my choice,” I say. “It’s the only one I’ve been given.”
His head jerks up, something shattering in his expression for the briefest second before he slams his walls back into place.
“I trust you,” I tell him, because I already know it’s the one thing that will wreck him most. But somehow, it’s also already true.
“You shouldn’t,” he grits out.
“Do you trust anyone else to train me?” I counter. He flinches, just barely, but I catch it, and when he raises his eyes to look at me, there’s something resolved and so fierce in his eyes.
“Leina Haverlyn.” The way he says my name—it’s not a surrender. It’s a vow. “Will you be mine? My ward, I mean?”
I tilt my chin up, meeting his gaze, and say what I know in my soul to be true.
“I already am.”
