and languid unfurled deep in her lower belly as she imagined doing what he proposed for three whole nights. And yet . . . “The people of Shadoria? What happens to them in the meantime?”
His jaw flexed. “These types of alliances take weeks to build. I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t trust my sister and the others to take care of them, but . . . I didn’t swear my allegiance to them, Haven. I swore it to you. And I’ll do whatever is necessary to ease your pain.”
“My pain?” She blinked.
“Yes, the same pain I took from you last night. The pain you try to hide from everyone. Surely you know by now that my duty is to protect you and no one else, whatever the cost.”
Bombarded by his touch and his smell and the promise of so much more, it took a few hazy seconds for his answers to sink in.
But when they did, when her mind grasped onto the meaning behind what he said . . .
A chill skittered over her shoulders. He couldn’t have doused the inferno raging inside her any more efficiently than if he’d thrown a bucket of ice water in her face. She inhaled deeply as his words clanged against her skull.
Allegiance. I swore it to you. Whatever it takes. Ease your pain.
My duty is to protect you—whatever the cost.
Like it was his command. His duty to touch her. To make her feel this way.
To make her—
No.
Those were the words of a soldier, not someone taken by passion. Certainly not someone . . . someone in love.
Love. In that instant, she knew how foolish she had been. To bring an emotion like love into the equation, especially now—what the Nethergates had she been thinking?
Fighting for breath, she retreated into the wall, away from him. From his touch and the traitorous way her flesh still clung to it. To him.
The air between them dimmed as light from her runemarks faded to their usual iridescent glow.
Any other time she would have still found them marvelous, but now they seemed muted and . . . cold. Containing a mere fraction of their brilliance from before.
For a painfully stretched out second, he stared at her, a questioning, almost vulnerable look in his silver eyes making the whole situation even more unbearable.
And then, as if recognizing the full magnitude of her discomfort, his hands fell to his sides and he retreated an inch, but it was enough to sever the spell.
Stupid, to think the son of the late Seraphian Empress could fall in love with a mortal. Not when there were so many of his own kind for him to choose from. Females with wings as glorious as his who could tear through the sky as his equal. Who would live thousands upon thousands of years, while she . . . she flamed out in the blink of an eye.
Love. Really, what had she been thinking?
Bitterness welled in her chest, sharp and biting, followed by the realization that it didn’t matter if he loved her back. Actually, it was best that he didn’t.
After last night, she understood her love was a curse. A death sentence.
A look of determination gritted his jaw, and he planted his hands on either side of her face, although he was careful not to touch her. “Tell me what I did to offend you.”
She shook her head, unable to find the words to cover her shame. His eyes narrowed. Runes, he wasn’t going to let this go until she fully embarrassed herself with the truth.
The inescapable, stupid truth.
I love you, idiot. And you just offered to service me like a whore.
No way she was saying that aloud, ever. He could soulread her and probably discover enough to understand, but for some reason, he was respecting her privacy—as much as that seemed to pain him.
That was . . . new.
“Haven—”
She darted under his arm, ignoring the raw confusion in his voice as she pretended to study a small octopus clinging to the glass. This whole thing felt like a mortifying nightmare, worse than the dreams she used to have where she showed up at court without a stitch of clothing and then tried to hide behind her sword.
But there was nothing to hide behind now. Nothing but the humiliation surely reddening her cheeks. The absolute mortification that, for a wild heartbeat, she thought his touch was real. That he wanted her the same way she wanted him.
That his offer of intimacy wasn’t fueled by