Page 160 of A Realm of Shattered Lies

Farin fixes his gaze on me. “Sure you are. You’re telling yourself you hate me beyond what’s forgivable. You’re telling yourself that you don’t share the same attraction for me that I hold for you. But that’s not news. What’s currently relevant is how you’re pretending to yourself that you’re not imagining me slipping into that sail with you, holding you close to me until my heat thaws your bones.”

I harrumph, but it’s mostly to hide the way his words would be causing me to shiver if I weren’t already doing that. “You possess a rather inflated view of yourself.”

He shrugs. “Who knows? Perhaps I’m secretly insecure and use my charm as a compensation method.”

I can’t help myself. I laugh.

His eyes glitter with satisfaction. “If I go on being self-deprecating, will you do that again?”

“Do what?”

“Laugh.”

This time, I blush, and it’s warm and lovely, and I’m probably only thinking it is because I’m freezing to death.

“Wanderer.”

My throat goes dry. “Yes?”

“I promise if you let me hold you, I won’t hurt you. Won’t do anything other than keep you warm.”

“I’m surprised you care anything about asking me for permission. Would have thought you’d be the type to force me into it, thinking you knew my own good.”

Farin examines me for a while. “I’d rather it not come to that.”

I swallow. “All right, then.”

Farin doesn’t hesitate. He crosses the width of the cave in a moment and slips into the sail I’m clutching around my shoulders.

Instantly, the heat of his chest warms me. Like stepping into a hot spring in the middle of winter. His heat spreads across my back, soothing the aching pain. When he slides his hand around my waist, running his fingers over it, careful to avoid my injury, I let out a sigh.

Mortification immediately overwhelms me. I wait for Farin’s conceited comment about me sighing for his touch, but it never comes.

“Better?” he whispers, his breath steaming at the tip of my ear.

I nod, and he pulls me in tighter, contouring his chest to the curve of my back, wrapping his legs between mine.

As good as it feels, the shivering doesn’t stop, not when the cold has seeped into my bones.

“Zora.”

“Mhm?”

“There’s a way we could warm you up faster.”

My body goes rigid under his touch. I know this, of course. The first survival rule for dealing with the cold is that body heat is most efficient if it’s skin-to-skin, surrounded by a blanket of some sort.

But it’s bad enough allowing a murderer to wrap his arms around me, to hold me through the night.

Lying naked in his arms would feel like brandishing my bare throat to the sharp edge of a blade.

“No.”

For a moment, Farin doesn’t answer, and I wonder if he’s contemplating forcing me to strip for my own good. Anxiety prickles my lungs, making it difficult to breathe. But then Farin just tucks his cheek into my hair and says, “Whatever you say, Wanderer.”

CHAPTER 66

BLAISE

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