full days she’d lain in bed, fighting a cough. “I was not. You’re not sleeping?”
“I did for a short time.” Her breath shuddered. “Then I could not.”
Now she sounded exhausted. And as his gaze adjusted to the dark, she seemed so frail to him . . . and so near tears.
An ache took hold of his heart. “You didn’t use the vine?”
Her short laugh sounded nothing like amusement, and nearer to despair. “How could I complete my task if I cannot awaken when danger comes? So instead I sit here, while my every thought tears my head apart.”
Her eyes closed, and the tears that spilled beneath her lashes all but destroyed him. Throat raw, he cupped her face in his hands.
“Lizzan,” he said thickly. “What are these thoughts that are hurting you? I will chase them away.”
Another painful laugh shook through her. “We do not do well as strangers.”
“I’m not sorry for it.”
“No.” Her lashes were wet spikes as she looked up at him again. “I would not have you be my enemy, either.”
“Never would I be.”
“Yet that is what I have made you. I have lied to you since the temple.”
“This I know,” he said gently, sweeping her cheeks with his thumbs. “I see you before anything else, Lizzan. So I saw you emerge from the temple doors and look to me first. I know that I am under your protection.”
“You knew? Of course you knew.” She answered herself on a trembling breath before reaching up to lay her hand against his. “But I meant to protect you from more than that. For I did not tell the full truth of my quest.”
He cared not how many times she lied to him. “What truth?”
“That on the day of the first snowfall, there will be a glorious battle in which my name will become legend and the shame lifted from my family . . . but I will die in that battle.”
“No,” he said softly. “You will not.”
“Aerax.” Her fingers squeezed his as if to impress each word upon him. “That is what Vela said would happen.”
“So you will abandon the quest.”
“And wear her mark on my face? Be truly forsaken and shunned?” Her eyes closed tight, spilling more tears. “Never could I bear it.”
“Then we will visit the next temple along this road and make an appeal to the priestess. You were drunk,” he reminded her. “Vela should never have taken your vow when you could not have full understanding of what she asked of you—”
“It is what I asked her for,” Lizzan whispered, and it was as if a glacial wind blasted through Aerax, freezing everything within him, stopping his heart and halting his breath. “It is my reward.”
Her reward.
All inside Aerax seemed as snow, heavy and muffled and frozen. Dimly he was aware that Caeb had abandoned his supper and of the cat’s snarling approach. Dimly he heard the echo of the speech Lizzan gave to him now, as if her explanation about villains and redemption were not sinking into his head but instead careening around the empty hollow of his chest so that each word could batter his unbeating heart.
But never could Aerax be frozen for long when he was with her, and Lizzan’s hot tears against his hands began to melt him again. Began to spark a fire. He was burning full bright when she said in an agonized voice, “I only wanted to spare you pain.”
No pain did Aerax feel. For she was not going to die.
Never would he allow it. Not even if it meant ripping Vela from the sky.
“You believe this hurts me?” he asked, and Caeb’s quiet growl underscored his voice. “You think pain is what I feel now? Because it is not pain, Lizzan.”
She went still, her gaze searching his face. “You’re . . . angry?”
Angry. Did she not know he would destroy anyone who would take her from this earth? Yet she was the one who threatened it now. What he felt was not anger. Nothing so tepid described the fury rampaging through his heart, the rage that he fought with all his strength to suppress, because never would he touch her in anger, and he still held her face in his hands.
Behind him, Caeb paced back and forth as if in a cage, snarling low and his unsheathed claws ripping the ground with every turn.
Lizzan’s gaze flicked to the cat before meeting Aerax’s again as he asked softly, “Is this what you think is best for you?”