Silver in the Bone (Silver in the Bone #1)(105)
Author: Alexandra Bracken

 

I stared up at him, exasperated.

 

“Yeah, I do deserve that look, but . . . I could warm you?” The words came out in a rush as he looked back up at the ceiling, his throat bobbing hard. “I mean, for your well-being. Not any other reason. I said that already, didn’t I? I’m just trying to make the point that it’s only weird if we make it weird, and we don’t have to make it weird. At all.”

 

The thought was enough to get the blood back to warming my face.

 

It won’t be anything different than when you and Cabell were kids, I told myself. In the days we had to sleep outside in the cold, we’d huddle together under the blankets to stay alive. And there was nothing there between Emrys and me to make it any more than that.

 

There wasn’t. And I was so cold.

 

To keep him from seeing the way the flush was spreading up from my neck to my ears—and to get him to stop talking—I turned onto my uninjured side, facing away from him. Creating space for him beneath the makeshift covers. It wasn’t fair for me to keep them all to myself, anyway.

 

His hesitation made my stupid heart give a kick. I stared at the dark stones across from me, my body tensed with a held breath. The firelight flickered away like the sun past the horizon.

 

There was a soft rustle of fabric. As I drew my next breath like the last one before a deep plunge, the jackets lifted and he slipped in behind me, fitting his body to mine.

 

Heat enveloped me like a summer day, spreading slowly across my every sense, turning my body from stone to skin again. He inched closer still, until my head was tucked beneath his chin, and I let out a shuddering breath as one of his impossibly warm arms wrapped around my waist.

 

“Is this okay?” he asked, barely a whisper.

 

I nodded, closing my eyes at the feeling of his heart pounding against my back. His breath stirred my hair, sending a shiver down my spine. I flushed as warmth pooled low in my belly again.

 

“Still cold?” Emrys’s voice rumbled in his chest.

 

His arm tightened around me until I brought my own down over it. Every thought, every nerve in my body, narrowed to where my bare skin touched his. Long legs wove through mine as if they belonged there. I wondered, as his hand spread over my belly, if he could feel the honeyed heat pooling in my core.

 

I breathed in deeply, no longer able to hear anything over the sound of our hearts racing one another to some unknown end. I felt almost drunk with it, the way his breathing hitched when I traced a vein from the top of his hand down over his wrist. I’d never had any other power but this.

 

It would be reckless to do it again. Absolute madness to let my finger drift farther through the light dusting of hair, tracing over him like a map to someplace unknown. My hand stilled as the soft skin became rough. Scarred.

 

Emrys turned his cheek to rest against my hair. “I lied to you before.”

 

A whisper. A secret.

 

My eyes opened.

 

“I didn’t get the scars on a job.” I could barely hear him over the pounding of his heart. He breathed the words as if he were scraping them from his soul. “My father gave them to me.”

 

It took a moment for me to understand what he’d said. Careful to tuck my wounded arm close to my body, I rolled over and pulled back from his chest to look at his face.

 

“What?” I whispered.

 

The tendons of his neck strained as he tilted his head back, closing his eyes. The scar there made my breath catch again. “The things he believes . . . He’s always been fixated on strange ideas, I guess, but in the last year . . . it’s gotten so much worse. This was . . . this was punishment when I refused to do what he wanted me to.”

 

My mind was too quick to fill in the blanks of what had happened to him. I didn’t dare ask any of the questions racing through my mind. I didn’t know what to say. What could I say to any of that?

 

Nash had warned me about Endymion Dye years ago, and as with most of his stories, I’d assumed it was exaggerated. The man had always been rigid and harsh, but never, in all my worst thoughts of him, could I have imagined him giving his own flesh and blood such cruel and lasting injuries.

 

Wordlessly, I drew Emrys close again; I wrapped my arm around his waist and pressed my face to the warm spot between his shoulder and neck. My hand stroked down his spine, and every rough ridge of a scar brought me closer to tears, imagining.

 

Emrys shuddered, his arm around me tightening. “That’s the real reason I took this job. I have nothing of my own. He controls everything and everyone in my life. I needed money to find a way to get me and my mom out of his reach. Out of his life.”

 

Stripping away the charming gloss, that beautiful polish of wealth he’d once worn as proudly as his signet ring, what was left was this real boy whose life had been little better than a cruel secret. One who’d been alone inside that gilded cage of pain and blood and quiet terror.

 

I breathed in the scent of him, my nose and lips skimming over his skin, trying to give comfort my words felt too clumsy to convey. His fingers drew drowsy circles on my back, leaving trails of fire behind.

 

“I wanted you to know,” he whispered. “I wanted to tell you before so you’d understand, but I was ashamed—”

 

“No,” I said vehemently. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

 

“There is,” he said thickly. “Because I was too much of a coward to leave before things got this bad. I was scared to let go of everything I’d grown up with, and what I was supposed to be. And then there were other fears, including if I’d ever see you again . . . and I wasn’t ready for that.”

 

My hand stilled on his back, but my heart climbed.

 

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I know how you feel.” He swallowed. “There’s nothing you have to do or say, and I’m not telling you all this because I want you to feel sorry for me—gods, that’s the last thing I want, especially knowing how much worse you’ve had it. But if we’re in this freezing hell and everything is upside down and nothing’s certain, I can at least be brave enough to tell you. I can tell you that to me, you’ve always felt like spring. Like possibility. I admire you, and respect you, and I want to be near you as long as I can. As long as you’ll let me be.”

 

The shock of his words exploded like stars inside my skin, somehow as inevitable as they were unexpected. My lips formed his name against his collarbone. Emrys.

 

“So . . . ,” he said with a trembling laugh. “There. I’ve said it now.”