and where it’d been steered and understood I’d never really had a say in any of it. And I wanted something that could just be mine. My choice.” Mia shrugged. “So I chose her.”
“BUT YOU DON’T REGRET IT? EVEN NOW?”
“No.” Mia shook her head. “I think I need someone like her. Being with her … it shows me there’s more to all this than just the blood. Because I want there to be. But it’s so hard to remember that sometimes.” Mia drew a deep breath off her smoke, savored the warm burn in her chest. “It’s as if there’s two halves of me, aye? Two pieces of the whole. One is just … darkness. Rage. She hates the world and everything in it. All she wants is to tear it down and laugh as it burns. And then there’s the me who thinks there might actually be something worth fighting for in all this. And maybe something to live for after.”
Mia looked into the flames—the fire ahead and behind.
“Two halves at war within me. And the one that will win is the one that I feed.”
Mia stared at the fire a long time. Watching the tongues of flame consume everything before them, smoke and ashes the remainder. Wondering if that’s what she was. If that was all that would be left when this was done.
She glanced toward Tric, found him gazing back at her.
“Why are you just looking at me like that?” she demanded. “Say something.”
“WHAT SHOULD I SAY? THAT I UNDERSTAND? THAT I CONCEDE?”
The boy shook his head, looking deep into her eyes.
“YOU SAY NOTHING’S KEPT BY THOSE WHO WON’T FIGHT FOR IT? I PLUNGED MY HANDS INTO THE DARK BETWEEN THE STARS FOR YOU, MIA. I TURNED MY BACK ON LIGHT AND WARMTH AND CLAWED MY WAY THROUGH THE ABYSS FOR YOU. I DIDN’T DO THAT SO I COULD STEP ASIDE GRACIOUSLY AND WATCH THE GIRL WHO KILLED ME LAY CLAIM TO THE GIRL I LOVE.”
“Well, you don’t have much choice, do you?”
“DO I NOT?”
He turned toward her, and she could feel the want in him. Carved in the line of his lips. Smoldering in his stare. Slow as ages, long as years, he lifted his hand to her face. Mia tensed but didn’t flinch, her jaw tightening as his thumb trailed down the scar on her cheek. The heat from the hearth had touched him, enriching the new flush of life in his skin, and his caress was warm as the firelight. She felt butterflies rolling in her belly, her lips parting, her breath coming a little faster.
“Don’t…,” she warned.
“WHY NOT?” he whispered.
“Because I said so.”
“AND YET YOU DON’T PULL AWAY?”
“Never flinch, Tric.”
“TELL ME YOU DIDN’T LOVE ME, MIA.”
His hand drifted down her cheek, closer to her lips, and though she knew she should stop him, every inch of skin he touched seemed to be afire.
“TELL ME YOU DON’T LOVE ME, STILL.”
He stepped closer, brought his other hand up to her face. This near to him, she could feel the fire inside him, that dark unflame burning at his heart. But strange as it seemed, wrong as it might be, she found herself drawn to it. Like a magnet. Like she was falling into it. The power of the goddess—the Dark Mother who’d given birth to the splinter of the god inside her, wide as the skies and deep as the oceans and black, black as the heart now thundering inside her chest. She’d thought his eyes were just empty darkness, but this close, this dangerously, wonderfully close, she could see they were filled with tiny sparks of light, like stars strewn across the curtains of night.
Beautiful.
“I DENIED DEATH FOR YOU,” he breathed, leaning closer still. “AND I’D DIE FOR YOU AGAIN. KILL FOR YOU. I’D TEAR THE STARS DOWN FROM THE HEAVENS TO FASHION YOU A CROWN. YOU ARE MY HEART. MY QUEEN. I’D DO ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING YOU ASK ME, MIA.”
He took hold of the collar of her greatcoat, began pushing it, inch by inch, back off her bare shoulders.
“ASK ME TO STOP,” he said.
She shouldn’t, Goddess, she couldn’t let this happen. Thoughts of Ashlinn burned in the back of her mind, but in her chest, between her thighs, a darker fire was smoldering now. She didn’t know whether it was the night’s kinship in them, the unearthly beauty he now possessed, the simple ache for the lover she’d thought gone forever, now standing right in front of her as if carved by the