don’t know who I am anymore.”
“I suppose that is a bigger problem, yes.” He smirked.
It was a mistake.
With a beleaguered and broken sigh, she slid from the sink and out of his grasp. He let her go. Perhaps now was not the best time to joke with her. He watched, wordless, as she put on pajamas. She tossed him a dry pair of pajama pants that would likely fit him.
How oddly thoughtful.
He stripped out of his soaked underwear, changed, and followed her as she crawled into bed. He closed the blinds for her and curled on his side at her back. He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close and placed a kiss to the back of her head. Her hair was still soaked, as was his. But it hardly mattered. Slipping his other arm beneath the pillow, he tucked his knees to hers.
She was hurting.
It bothered him immensely.
And he despised that it did.
“I never thought I would get a chance to hold you again,” he murmured. “I never thought I would get a chance to kiss you…to lay here like this with you. To simply be with you. I thought that was the end of it all. I would have given anything to save you. I suppose, in the end, I did.”
She lay there, eyes shut, and said nothing.
He kissed the back of her head again. “I do not care who you are now, or however much of you has been replaced by the Faire. Because whoever you had to become to save our lives is more of you than I was ever going to have again. I will, for once in my life, not be greedy. I will be happy with whatever part of you I will be allowed to have. Because the alternative is far, far worse.”
She smiled. Sad, and weary, but a smile all the same. “I love you, Simon. Sometimes you aren’t a total jerk.”
“Only sometimes? I must work harder at maintaining my bad reputation.”
Cora elbowed him, and he grunted. It was a potshot from a woman who could now officially crush him. He’d take it. “Simon, don’t ruin your nice speech.”
“Very well.” He nuzzled into her and shut his eyes. Sleep was going to come for him hard and fast. He did not tell her that he loved her. He honestly didn’t understand why. Part of his mind nagged at him, pestering him to finally blurt out what he had tried to say so many times.
His shadow was gone. But it still seemed that part of him lingered. Or was never really separate from him. It was hard to say.
But why not tell her?
It wasn’t the right moment, perhaps.
He should confess his feelings on a knee in front of her, holding up a ring in his palm. He would have to fashion a new one—giving her the one he had offered to Suzanna would be quite tacky indeed.
Yes. He’d make a ring. Perhaps if he asked the Faire for a gemstone, it would provide something suitable. A ruby would be far more fitting than a diamond, he decided. Those stones were far too cliché for him. Ruby and onyx. He wasn’t much of a jeweler, but he was talented at everything, so it would come easily to him.
He wove his fingers between hers and let out a long, contented breath. She squeezed his hand briefly, but he could tell she was already half asleep. “I will suffer much if it means I get to hold you, cupcake.”
She let out a small hum, but that was all. Poor dear. He would let her get some rest. He needed plenty as well.
But his words were true.
He might endure a great many things if it meant that he could have her.
Including love.
11
Turk was pacing. He knew he was. And he knew how batty it drove Amanda. But he couldn’t help it. He crossed back and forth along the distance of the office portion of his tent. He had gone by the observation tower only to find the doors blown clean off. Warped and burnt as if something had exploded them from the inside. But no fire damaged the structure itself.
It had been Cora who was to blame.
Cora, or whatever it was that she had become.
Turk ran his hand over his hair. It was no longer smoothed neatly back. But he didn’t care. His mind was reeling. The impossible had happened, and he was still grappling with how it could have played out.
How did she free