Page 77 of Kissed By the Gods
But none of them are quite right. I sift through the fragile, half-formed pieces of my thoughts, trying to understand it, trying to pin it down, and when realization dawns, it almost knocks the breath from my lungs.
I feel safe. Not because the world has stopped trying to tear itself apart or because the danger is gone. No, I feel safe because ofhim.
The last time I felt this way, I was a child—small and unknowing, tucked between my parents’ sides, their voices murmuring soft stories into the dark, protecting me from the worst of the world’s cruelty. Before I learned how easily everything can be ripped away, before I learned safety is just a pretty lie we weave for children to ward against nightmares.
I close my eyes, pressing in closer to Ryot’s chest, letting the steady rise and fall of his breathing be enough.
For now, I let myself believe the lie again.
“Chaos is not blind. She watches. She listens.”
Faraengardian folklore
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The darkness isn’tas suffocating this time.
It’s not dragging me down like mud. It’s more like water, something I can swim through. So I do. I kick forward, and cut through the black with my arms, weightless and soundless. My breath moves easily, even though there’s no air. No pressure. Cold that hums against my skin—not cruel, not sharp. Somewhere distant, there’s wind. A low, endless howl that doesn’t quite touch me, but still makes my chest tighten. There’s no light here, but I’m not afraid. It’s just that nothing wants to be seen.
Until something does. A flicker. A figure.
I stop swimming and float until I can make out the shape in the darkness.
It’s Ryot. He’s sitting on a jagged stone outcropping that juts from nothing, his back to me. He’s shirtless, scars a pale map across his shoulder blades, and his head is bowed like he’s listening for something. Or praying.
“Ryot?” My voice skips, a stone across the water. The sound of it sends out soft ripples in this water-like darkness.
Ryot lifts his gaze, and his midnight-blue eyes arelit from within—blue embers smoldering at the end of a fire. Or the beginning of it. “What are you doing here?” he asks me.
I walk—swim?—forward, my limbs moving without resistance, like the darkness is holding me up instead of dragging me down.
“Dreaming,” I tell him. “But this is much nicer than my normal dreams.”
He kind of smirks, and that, at least, is the same even here. “Agreed,” he says.
His gaze lingers on me as I leave the blanket of darkness behind and then his eyes heat, like those embers caught fire. I look down to find I’m naked.
I laugh. “Well, at least this is a dream. Otherwise, this might be awkward.”
His smile finally breaks through—real, crooked, and far too pleased. “If it helps, I’m not complaining.”
I sit next to him on the rocks. There’s something familiar about this place, but I don’t know what it is. It’s hazy, covered in mist. I can’t make it out. But I’m not worried about it. I’m more interested in him.
“Tell me something about yourself. Something no one knows,” I demand.
His smile fades—not in a bad way, just in that quiet, serious Ryot way that says he’s thinking. “You don’t ask easy things, do you?”
“I thought we established that easy isn’t really our thing.”
That earns a soft huff of a laugh, but he doesn’t look at me. He leans forward, forearms braced on his knees, fingers laced loosely together. The embers in his eyes have dimmed—not gone cold, simply banked.
“Something no one knows…” he repeats, then goes silent long enough that I almost take it back. Finally, he says, “I’m afraid of deep water.”
“Seriously?”
