Page 112 of The Demon Crown

He tilted his head to the side, nostrils flaring with some unnamed emotion before he cleared his throat. “What did you say?”

“I said, it talks. A lot. Most of the time I don’t even realize that it’s talking, but it’s gotten better at speaking in my head and, to be honest, the ideas that it tells me are rather good ideas. I was just telling it we will not be sneaking out the window and stealing another mount, even though it’s quite convinced that the last time we did it was an adventure. And I’ll be honest, since you gave it to me, I have been more likely to seek out adventure in a much less... careful manner than I’m used to.”

Oh gods, he was turning rather sickly pale. His normally sun-tanned and freckled face approached the color of parchment, and that wasn’t right at all.

Even though she still wore nothing but her skin, she darted forward and grabbed his elbow. He listed to the side before she caught him up, wedging herself under his arm and drawing him closer to the bed. “Come on. Easy, now. You’re a big man to fall that far, and don’t expect me to catch you.”

He grunted before landing hard on the bed. She sat down next to him, skating her hand over his back as he seemed to struggle to piece these thoughts together.

“The spirit—” he started, then stopped, staring at her hand when she placed it on his leg.

She felt it too. The strange desire to pick up where they had left off. Like they hadn’t gotten their fill when they’d been so deep in each other’s bodies that she knew every wrinkle, every scar, and every hidden place like it was her own. She wanted to touch more of him, to hold him tighter inside her body for just a few more moments.

Maybe because it felt like things were going to shatter into a million piece at any point. Like everything was going to break and they would get none of it back.

“The spirit is talking, yes.” She turned her hand over, pressing the back of it to his leg while she waited for him to take her hand. “I know it’s not what you expected, but it’s happening and we will move forward from here.”

His fingers laced through hers. “And you do not mind this new... situation?”

“I don’t think so,” Varya chuckled. “I don’t know what to think. This all has been so strange. First you tell me I’m immortal, then you give me a spirit who talks in my head. I have moments where I wonder if this was all some fever dream and I’m going to wake up any second realizing I’ve been in this bed the whole time and that you’ve been trying to heal me.”

Even though she knew that couldn’t be the case, she still had that vague thought in the back of her mind. What if she’d conjured all this up? What if she had made it up in her head that he had spent so much time making sure she felt loved, honored, and cherished?

He lifted her hand and pressed it to his lips. “You are here, Varya. This is not a dream, though it is my honor to hear that you believe it is a dream to be with me.”

She felt her cheeks burn. “Stop that.”

“Stop what?” His tongue slipped out, tracing between her fingers before he pressed one more kiss there. “I cannot get enough of you, woman. That should tell you all you need to know about how I feel.”

Did it? Not really. She wanted to hear the words as well, but they’d get there. She had to believe that.

“It wants me to save my people.” She traced her fingers over his, keeping her touch gentle and soothing. “I want to do that as well. Perhaps the spirit only amplifies the feelings that are deep inside me.”

“You want to run?”

“I don’t know.” No, that wasn’t quite right. She knew the answer to that. “I don’t want to run from you. I don’t want you to be angry at me again, or to feel like I’ve betrayed you somehow. But I cannot linger here in this luxury as you do.”

Varya looked at him, then. At the fine cloth that clung to his body, the loose pants made of silk, even though her own people wore scratchy cotton and wool. At the rings that always decorated his fingers and the gold clips in his hair that swung from tiny braids.

“You are Greed,” she whispered. “I know that means you will take whatever you can and make no apologies for it. But I am not you.”

“I know we are very different. But I…” He paused at the thought, perhaps trying to figure out a better way to tell her no. And she knew he was going to say it, long before he did. “I cannot risk you again, Varya. The idea of losing you tears me apart. And I have no wish to see you harmed.”

“That’s why you gave me this spirit, didn’t you? So it could heal me if I did get harmed.”

“You can still lose your head. We are immortal, not deathless.”

And she was willing to risk that, if that’s what it came to. If her people were alive and better off without the Horde? Then she would gladly lose her head.

But he would not turn into a different man, not for her, and Varya still loved him. She felt that knowledge settle in her mind. For all his folly, for all his faults, she loved him.

And damn it, that meant she had to come at this in a different way. A way that would make him see the reasoning behind it.

Varya slid off the bed onto her knees in front of him. She moved so his thighs were on either side of her, the same position she’d found herself in many times throughout the past few days. His eyes flashed briefly, that heat she knew so well returning before he leaned back on his palms.

Smoothing her hands up his thighs, she pressed her kiss to the inner right one. “The Horde attacked us both, Greed. I’m sure you remember that. They took from both of us. They broke your tail, your ribs, made it so that you had to run from them.”

He grunted, obviously ignoring that he’d ever been injured at all.

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