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“You kissed me to fuel your powers, knowing that I…” His voice caught, the sentence breaking apart before he could finish it. “Knowing how I⁠—”

He swallowed, jaw flexing as if the rest of the words had lodged somewhere painful.

“I have craved your touch for lifetimes,” he said, quieter now. “Longed for you until it became something I could not cut out of myself. I never thought it possible to fix this, until I saw you on Ascension night and I realised my heart still only beat for you.”

His breath shuddered. “It hurt every fucking day to have you so close to me at the barracks and still be too far away to touch. And when I found you…” His voice roughened, breaking around the memory. He stopped, hands slipping from his pockets. He braced them against the windowpane, head dipping as the golden light carved over the tense line of his shoulders.

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you manipulated me.”

I let his words hang between us, heavy and suffocating, thick with all the things neither of us knew how to forgive.

“You had me tortured and raped for years. You lied about your identity. Stole me from my wedding and trapped me alongside you in the Hells, yet have the audacity to feel manipulated by me?” The words tumbled out faster by the end, abandoning the pretence of playing sweet once again.

“I know what I did to you,” he snarled, though the hurt in his voice made the words sound almost broken. “Do you think I do not carry it? Do you think I do not wake with it in my throat? I did what I thought was best for the kingdoms! And I have hated myself for every second of it.” He pushed away from the window, towering over me. Our chests heaved rapidly, neither willing to back down. “You fucking broke my heart, you had me locked away and-”

“For the last fucking time,” I yelled over the top of him, fists clenching into fists at my sides. “I am not Maraveth!”

I closed the space between us until his body heat pressed into me. His mouth parted slightly, eyebrows pulling together in shock.

For a moment, the shadow bond in my chest tightened, as if somewhere, Rythos could feel that I was about to betray him.

For a breath, I felt him everywhere. In the hollow beneath my ribs. In the phantom weight of shadows against my skin. In the ache of a bond stretched too far across realms that should never have been able to keep us apart.

Yet my hand hovered over Helion’s chest.

I swallowed the guilt-driven grief that threatened to spill tears from my eyes while somewhere far away, a darkness I loved was dying.

I could almost feel the shape of his heart in my hands. Could almost hear it crack beneath the choice I was about to make.

But I would let myself become the blade that butchers his heart in two if it meant keeping him breathing.

“You punished me for things I don’t remember. Broke me for a vengeance I do not understand. I’m trying to trust you, Helion, as my husband…”

My fingers curled into Helion’s shirt. The words tasted like betrayal, yet I said them anyway.

“I am ready to fulfil our bargain.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Mirrors and Flame

Lyra

“I’m ready to fulfil our bargain,” I said, voice breaking under the weight of the decision.

Helion lowered his mouth to mine, ghosting his lips over mine with reverence. His guarded eyes searched mine for the trick or lie he expected to find there.

“No,” he whispered, pulling away.

I squeezed my eyes shut and caught his mouth with mine, kissing him with all the desperation of a woman pretending she belonged to him.

Surprise broke from him in a sharp breath, only to dissolve into a deep, hungry groan.

His tongue flicked against the seam of my lips, demanding entry. I parted for him, slanting to allow him deeper access and fought the urge to melt under his touch.

His hand tangled in my hair, fisting it at the base of my neck as his other hand dug into my waist, pulling me closer.

This is for Rythos, I told myself to quench the guilt that threatened to drown me. I don’t want this.