Stormbreak (Seafire #3) - Natalie C. Parker Page 0,89

lean into it, let it support her for a moment or a turn.

She sighed, pulling away to rest her back against the windowsill, where the night breeze cooled the thin sheen of sweat now coating the back of her neck. “When I tell you I’m fine, your job is to believe me.”

“My job.”

“Oran,” she said, turning his name into both a protest and a request.

“I do believe you,” he said, voice low. “And I don’t.”

It was three words, but with them, he said so much. That he knew she was hurting. That he knew the fight had changed her as much as it had changed everything else. That even now, he wished she’d let him be the one to face Tassos. That he knew how her heart was shifting and twisting in on itself, struggling to keep its shape. But it was a useless battle. Where once her heart only needed to beat for herself and her crew, now it needed to beat for everyone.

“I would do it again,” she said. She pressed her lips between her teeth to stop herself from saying more. What more was there to say? She’d killed a man outside of battle, and there was no part of her that regretted the choice. It had been the right one even if it had been a terrible one.

Oran nodded mournfully. “You may have to.”

Caledonia had revisited the memory so many times already that it took very little to summon the image of Tassos kneeling before her, the firm pressure of his throat in her hands. She pressed her eyes closed, willing anything to take its place. Even blackness. But it played out in exquisite strokes. She felt the warm rush of blood over her fingers, saw the slump of his body, tasted the bile on her tongue. And she shuddered.

Oran stepped closer. “It will get easier.”

“Easier?” Horror elevated Caledonia’s voice. “I don’t want it to get easier, Oran, I want it to not be necessary.”

“If we do this right, it will be both.”

“I don’t want killing like that to be something I can do without feeling it!” she said, suddenly panicked. “And I should feel it more than I do, shouldn’t I? Have I changed so much that I can slit a man’s throat and hold court over his body for—for—”

Her breath came in short, pained gasps and she leaned forward, glad for the moment her hands met Oran’s chest and his arms encircled her back. He stroked her lightly, making soothing circles with his palm as the breeze grazed her bare shoulders. Soon her breathing was even and the vise around her throat loosened its hold.

“Oran,” she murmured, her forehead still pressed to his chest.

“Yes?” he answered, drawing his hands down to her waist, the pressure of his fingers warm through the thin fabric of her shirt.

“I don’t know what happens to us—to me—when this is all over,” she said. “But right now, I need you here even if that means I ask you to do terrible things, to watch me do terrible things.” She drew her head up to look into his eyes. “Because you’ve done this. You’ve compromised parts of yourself in service to others. You’ve turned yourself into something terrible and vicious. But that’s not why I need you. I need you by my side because after you did all of that, you made your way back.” She flattened her palms against his chest, feeling the heat radiating off him. “When this is over, I want to be able to come back from all that I’ve done. I want you to help me do that.”

“Hell.” Oran frowned, his head bowing slightly, fingers pulling at her waist. “I don’t think I came back.”

“But you did, I saw you. I know you. And if you hadn’t, you couldn’t . . . say the things you say.”

Oran blew out a breath, staring into her eyes as he wrestled to accept what she was saying. And what she wouldn’t say.

In the end, he whispered, “I wish you’d let me take that fight, Cala.”

“There are some things no one can do but me.”

“I hate that that is true.” He sighed sharply, hot breath puffing against her chin, then he nodded. “But I will stand by your side and I won’t let you fall. Because I—”

She pressed a hand to his mouth, suddenly desperate not to hear the words she could not, would not repeat back to him, not until after, if she managed to drag herself out