REEVE AWOKE THREE DAYS LATER.
Faron was dozing off when he surged up like a drowning man breaking the surface of the sea. His eyes were wild with panic, his heart frenzied beneath her hand as she touched his chest in an effort to keep him from toppling off the side of the bed. His feet kicked at the sheets, but he stilled at her touch, breathing like a cornered animal.
“I’m here, I’m here,” Faron murmured, meeting his gaze steadily. “You’re okay now.” His eyes were so wide that his irises looked like a drop of ink on blank paper. “You’re free.”
They breathed together until the tension bled slowly, so slowly, from Reeve’s body, his shoulders lowering from his ears, his pulse no longer a clarion call. When it seemed as if he was seeing her and not whatever nightmares had lived behind his eyes as he slept, she brought her hands back to her lap.
“Faron,” he said. His mouth twisted. His breathing picked up. His entire body was shaking, so violently that she thought for a moment he’d sunk back into his nightmare. But then he continued speaking. “Faron, he killed them. Wayne and Aisha, he—they—”
“It’s okay.” Faron reached out for him again, a weight in her chest that grew only heavier when tears streamed down his cheeks. “It’ll be okay. We’re okay.”
“It’s not okay.” He held her tighter, his fingers unsteady where they dug into the small of her back. “Those were my friends. He killed my friends.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—”
“They’re dead—”
“I’m here. I’m sorry.” Faron climbed out of her chair and onto the bed, and wrapped her arms snugly around his body. The sound that Reeve made, as if his heart had been punched out of his body, made her want to cry with him. “I’m here.”
It was surreal, to be with him like this. They had only kissed once before Iya had taken over Reeve’s body, and for almost every day before then they had been enemies. The number of times he had held her could be counted on one hand, and yet Faron felt at home. She let him mourn his friends, murmuring insensibly because there was nothing she could say that would make this situation better. All she could do was hope that he was taking as much comfort from her as she was from him.
Faron hadn’t realized how much working alone had affected her until she was finally promised the return of one of the few people she trusted. He was right. It wasn’t okay. But it could be, in at least one definition of the word, if they were together.
She ran a soothing hand over his shoulders, again and again, until his sobs subsided and she could no longer feel the damp stain of his tears. He stayed there, arms tight around her waist, for so long that she wondered if he’d fallen back asleep, or if maybe he was thinking, possibly even about how weird it was for Faron to be wiping his tears instead of doing her best to cause them. Would it be appropriate to kiss his cheek? Did he even still want her that way?
Faron shook her head. That should be the last thing on her mind.
The action jolted Reeve, who pulled back just enough to study her in that peculiar way he did, as if he were attempting to read her the way he would a book. Faron couldn’t help smiling.
“I can’t believe I actually missed that,” she teased. “You’re still an ass.”
Reeve’s mouth twitched as if he wanted to smile but had forgotten how to. “I don’t know why I thought you’d be nice to me after that kiss.”
“This is the nicest I’ve ever been to you.”
He pressed his forehead against hers and huffed out a breath. “Point well made.”
They breathed together, in their own little world. Faron wished that nothing could shatter this peace, but she had no idea how long they had left before Iya returned. For all she knew, he would never let them be alone together again.
“Iya has taken over Jesper Soto’s body the same way he took over yours,” Faron explained. “He’s been experimenting with blood magic, apparently, and transferring from your body to Jesper’s gave him his full power back.” She bit her lip, the words He did it for me getting caught in her throat. Instead, she told him about Jesper’s kidnapping, about capturing the Emerald Highlands, about the feral dragons, and about Elara’s daring rescue attempt. She swallowed back any explanation of how she’d gotten Elara to leave; she’d given him more than enough to digest for now. “How do you feel?”
“I don’t—” Reeve dissolved into a coughing fit. Faron hurried to get him a glass of water and a roll of bread that she slathered with butter. He drained the glass in seconds, but he ate slowly, breaking off pieces with his fingers and chewing as if he had forgotten how. Panic sat in her chest, but she needed to be calm for his sake. “Weak, I think. Confused. But… better than I have in months. Maybe years.”
Faron melted in relief. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He took another slow bite. “Sometimes, it was like… it was so loud in my head. I thought I was just anxious. Turns out it was an asshole god.”
Faron laughed, and, if it sounded as if she were on the edge of tears, he was nice enough not to say anything. “You could also be anxious.”
“I probably am, yeah,” Reeve said with a laugh of his own. Even after his laughter tapered out, a smile remained on his face, gentle and bright and impossible to look at directly. But when she tried to turn her head, Reeve captured her chin in a tender touch. She stared down at a blue like the surface of the ocean at midday, sparkling, sparkling. “I want to kiss you.”
“Now?” She smiled. “You’re not well. Your breath probably stinks.”
“If you don’t like me when I’m stinky, you don’t deserve me when I’m minty.”
“For Irie’s sake.” Faron shoved him, wrinkling her nose at his answering laugh. “Go brush your damn teeth, and then we’ll talk about kissing.”
While he was gone, Faron rubbed her fists against her eyelids so hard that red burst against the black. Her face was hot. Her lips were dry. For the first time in months, she wondered if she looked okay: Her braids were limp, itching to come out, and she hadn’t put on makeup that morning. Her day dress was rumpled from the chair, and her lower back ached. She wasn’t ugly—though, admittedly, no one but Reeve had ever expressed that sort of interest in her, so maybe she was—but there were pimples breaking out along her hairline and jaw, and her mouth tasted of old jam.
Before she could flee to her room to brush her own teeth, Reeve returned.
As always, he looked amazing. Color was already returning to his pallid cheeks, his curls grown long and bouncing with every step he took toward her. They curved around his ears, brushed the back of his neck, and combined with his unshaved chin to lend him a roguish appearance that intrigued her. His smile held a promise. It made her feel warm all over.
Faron hovered next to the bed, unreasonably nervous. “Are you sure that you’re all right? I mean, you were in a coma. If—if you need to take it easy…”
“Are you concerned or afraid?” Reeve asked, stopping a short distance away to study her again. Her nervousness shrank, shifted, until it felt more like anticipation. “You know we don’t have to do anything if you don’t want—”
Faron kissed him. His hands cupped her cheeks, and her arms wrapped around his back, her fingers gripping his shirt to keep her grounded. At first, it felt weird, their smushed mouths and their hot breaths and the way she wasn’t quite sure whether she should close her eyes. Faron assumed she wasn’t doing it right, that her second kiss was worse than her first, and that Reeve was disappointed.
Then he tilted her head and dove back in for a third, and fire raced through her blood as if someone had lit a match.
Faron gasped, and Reeve’s mouth opened, his tongue slipping between her lips and drawing from her a sound she hadn’t known she could make until that moment. She pressed into him, hypnotized by the slick glide of their tongues, the soft brush of his hair against her forehead. Their kisses turned greedy. Desperate. Hungry. And all the while, Reeve held her with such soft hands, as if he knew she were unbreakable but he didn’t want to take the risk.
He said her name in a way he’d never said it before, a low growl of syllables, and then his mouth was on her neck. Faron’s knees gave out.
“Whoa!” Reeve caught her with an arm around her waist, his lips red and damp, his eyes glazed over. Faron seriously considered flinging herself out the window, just to spare herself the embarrassment, but his grip tightened around her as if he knew what she was thinking. His grin was annoyingly smug. “I guess I should have warned you that I’m a really good kisser.”
“I’m going to bite your tongue off,” Faron said peevishly.
Reeve sat on the edge of the bed, taking her with him, helping her rearrange herself so that she was comfortably straddling him. His thumb tapped patterns against her hip bone, and she was so sensitive to his touch that every tap felt like a bolt of electricity. At least his breathing was as ragged as hers, so she wasn’t the only one affected by this… thing between them.
This love.
Faron pressed her forehead against his. “I really like you.”
“I love you.”
She froze.
“You don’t have to say it back. I know it takes you a while, if ever, to feel those kinds of things, and I don’t expect you to.” Reeve’s nervous but determined expression cracked her heart in two. “But, yeah. I do. I love you. And I’m afraid if I don’t say it now, I’ll never get the chance.”
“You—” Faron managed before her voice gave out.
Reeve swallowed. “Yeah. Is that okay?”
“I—yeah, of course. Hey. Of course.” Now it was Faron’s turn to hold his face between her hands, to look at him as if he were something precious. “You’re allowed to do—and feel—whatever you want, okay? I was just… surprised.”
Surprised and ashamed. He wouldn’t say that if he knew everything that she’d done. No one would.
“Why? Because you’re a nightmare?” Reeve asked, a smile growing at her indignant protest. He placed a kiss on the center of her palm, and that shut her up abruptly. “My whole life has been trying to please people. When I was sick, I didn’t want to give my parents more reasons to worry about me. When I moved to San Irie, I didn’t want to give people more reasons to hate me. But you—you were impossible to please. You hated me, and not for any good reason. I could tease you. I could snap at you. I could breathe around you. When I realized how I felt about you, it seemed obvious in hindsight. How much I looked forward to our arguments. How I’d think about you for hours. How sometimes I just wanted to—”
“Kill me?” Faron suggested with a raised eyebrow.
“Mm, something like that.”
Reeve kissed the inside of her wrist before meeting her eyes again. Faron could still feel the warmth of his lips there, like a brand. She could feel the warmth of his words, too, wrapped around her very soul. It was more than she deserved. He was more than she deserved.
She lowered her gaze and climbed out of his lap, fidgeting with the cuff of her dress. Her abandoned chair awaited her, but she pulled it closer to the bed so he didn’t take this as a rejection. Her mind played his confession on a loop, and the more it thrilled her, the more she wanted the ground to swallow her whole. Reeve had been awake for less than an hour, and in that time, he had already cried for his friends and made her feel loved in case they never got to be together. He was so good—and she was a monster.
“I… I have something to tell you,” she whispered. “Well, a lot of things, and I’m not proud of any of them. But if—if you really love me, you need to know. Because after you hear this, you might not.”
Reeve tilted his head. “Okay.…”
Faron couldn’t look at him, so she confessed her sins to the bedsheet. The village she had damned by finding their hidden children. The injuries she had caused Marius Lynwood and the Warwicks. Forcing her way into the souls of Jesper and Signey Soto… and even Elara. She told him about her failure to learn anything substantial, her failure to bond with Gael so he could emerge without Lightbringer’s influence, her failure to leave Iya’s side when she had the chance. She told him about her anger, that ever-present anger, that made her feel both out of control and more focused than she’d ever been in her life.
“I used to think this would all end one way,” Faron finished. “Either I’d die in battle, or I’d be captured by Langley and imprisoned at the Mausoleum—if not worse. When the war ended, I felt like a dull blade, the kind you toss in the junk drawer between the single earring and the old rag you keep meaning to throw away, you know? I didn’t want another war or anything like that, but I lacked purpose. I thought… this was my purpose. To be the only person who could reach him, stop him. But all I do is hurt people. Destroy things. Make everything worse. He and I are co-Riders, which means our souls are the same. And he’s a monster. I’m—I’m a monster.”
“You’re not a monster, Faron.”
She closed her eyes. “How can you even say that?”
“Because I know you.” Reeve said it as if it were simple. As if it were obvious. “I’ve always known you. Growing up, I was… torn. Between Langley and San Irie. Between missing my family and doing what was right. Between wanting to be your friend and knowing I should stay away. Picking on you was the only time I was ever truly in the moment. You were the only burst of color in the gray. I never knew myself, but I always knew you.”
“Because you hated me,” Faron said, a little too bitterly for it to be funny.
“I never hated you. I just didn’t like you sometimes.”
The reference to one of their most vicious arguments surprised her into laughing. She dragged her gaze up to his and almost gasped at the affection on his face. Even with all her sins laid bare, he didn’t look afraid. He didn’t even look disappointed. He was watching her as if he might never again get the chance and wanted to memorize her from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet. His hand was upturned on the bed between them, a quiet invitation. Faron’s heart felt as if it might explode, but she placed her palm on his. When his fingers closed around hers, she had to swallow back the urge to cry.
“I know that things are a mess right now, and I know this is hardly a fair comparison, but there was a time when I would look at you and imagine us just like this—a time I would sternly tell myself to wake up from that impossible dream,” Reeve said, his eyes full of nothing but love. “When you kissed me that day on the airfield, I knew in that moment who I was, what I wanted, and where I belonged. Everything in perfect alignment. Everything beginning and ending with you. No matter where this war takes us or who this war turns us into, if we’re together in whatever way you’ll have me, we can do the impossible. I learned that from you.”
“I love you.”
Reeve smiled. “That was obvious, but I was trying not to be an ass about it.”
“Well, you failed,” Faron said, but she was smiling, too.
Somehow, she felt… calm, and she was afraid to lose that feeling. Reeve, so skilled at tugging her out of her own head, had always had this effect on her, but it was different when he used that skill in this context. Before, it had been annoying, how hard it was to remember that she needed to hate him, when he was the only person who seemed to be looking out for her sometimes. Now it was yet another reason for the ember in her chest when she looked at him, a quiet, steady warmth that kept her going on her most hopeless days.
“I still love you, though,” she continued. “I’m sorry that I’ll be bad at it.”
His smile widened, too wide to be attractive, a dorkish spread of teeth that made him look like a little kid. “You, um… You can be bad at it. I don’t mind.”
“No, I want to be good at it,” Faron insisted. “You deserve that, Reeve.”
“I don’t think this is about deserving. But I’m too tired to argue with you right now.” His eyes fluttered shut, but he didn’t let go of her hand. His thumb brushed her knuckles in a soothing rhythm. “He wants you to believe that you’re a bad person, because if you’re still good, after everything, then it means he just made all the wrong choices. But the difference between the two of you is that, at some point, Gael Soto stopped trying. And you’re too stubborn to ever, ever stop trying.”
“Don’t think I didn’t notice you complimented and insulted me at the same time.”
“I’m serious,” Reeve said, though he ruined it by yawning.
Faron wondered if she would ever stop smiling. “I know you are. Shut up.” She waited until his breathing had evened out and his grip on her hand had loosened before she whispered, “Thank you.”