Page 92 of Healer to the Ash King
I reach for him, and he surges forward with fire in his eyes and kisses me.
His mouth envelops my faint cries, his hands rush over my body. I release a sob, winding my arms around his neck. He’s joining me on the throne now, pulling me into his lap, cradling me against him, and the whole time our mouths never part. I am illuminated inside, widening and sparkling, thrilling with the pleasure and with the joy of kissing him. I release a bit of my healing light and wind it around him as I lock my body more tightly to his.
He tastes like smoke and secrets, like wine and wickedness. I want to devour him. His tongue is a silky flame in my mouth, his teeth are the edge of a cliff I’d gladly leap from if it means I can do this forever.
But we have to breathe, and so we part, gasping.
Perish sweeps both hands down over my hair, cupping my face, looking into my eyes. I can see the reflection of my golden irises in his scarlet ones.
“You,” he says, hoarse and ragged. “You.”
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When the Ash King says “You” in that tone—there’s something thrillingly significant in the word. But I don’t dare hope for what it could mean.
So I wait silently, sliding my fingers through his beautiful silver-white hair, sitting naked on his lap as he devours my face with his eyes.
“You belong to yourself,” he says. “I will not hold you here after the Calling. And you do not know what it costs me to say that.”
I touch his mouth with a fingertip, tracing the shape of his lips. “I wish I could bring you home with me. I would dress you in simple clothes, a field worker’s garb, and we would run barefoot through the potsava fields. I would show you a volcano with a fire that rivals your own. We live on the edge of danger, you see. My village is under constant threat from that mountain, but even if it destroyed us, we would not blame or hate it, because it has given us such a good life.”
I’m not sure why there are tears in my eyes, but his are wet, too.
“That sounds perfect,” he whispers. “And you love this mountain, the one that could kill you without meaning to?”
I press my palm over his heart. “I do.”
“The mountain would give you everything in its power.” He leans in, lips brushing mine. “But the one thing a mountain cannot do is move. It cannot give up its place, or abandon those who depend on it.”
I kiss him, slow and soft, my heart full to the brim and sweetly aching. “A person might be persuaded to move from one mountain to another, if she could be sure that the new mountain would belong to her alone.”
He leans back, staring at me with shocked gladness. “Do you mean that? You said you didn’t want any of this. You only want to return home.”
“And I do want to go home. But perhaps not forever. I have a suspicion everything would feel smaller and lonelier than it used to.”
“Smaller and lonelier.” His hand glides along the curve of my waist. “Yes.”
We are on the verge of something tremulous and exquisite and tender. He kissed me, and I opened the door a bit farther. It’s up to him to push it wider still.
But I’m desperate. So I nudge him a little. “What is this?” I whisper. “Still sex and secrets?”
He vents a shaky laugh. “I think you know the answer.”
“In spite of today, in the arena?”
“In spite of that, and because of it. Fighting you today, I was also fighting myself, and I realized that I wanted you to win. I couldn’t allow it, but with all my heart I wished for it.”
I can’t look at him. My every nerve is taut, and my whole being craves his next words.
“I do not want any woman’s mouth or body if it isn’t yours,” he says quietly. “I trust you as I’ve trusted no one in years, Cailin. Everything about you sings to me. You’re intelligent, diplomatic yet sharp-tongued, kind-hearted to a fault. And you find the humor in everything. Leaving aside your lack of noble blood, you would make the perfect queen.”
“You trust me?” I bite my lip, guilt warring with the joy in my heart.
“Yes.”
I slide off his lap, and reluctantly he lets me go.
He trusts me. This man who has been betrayed by allies, by his family—he trusts me, the girl with ties to the Undoing, the girl who promised to help the murderous rebels destroy him.
