I PEELED MY FACE FROM KANE’S NOW SOGGY SHIRT AND LOOKED UP AT HIM.

“Feel a bit better?”

I sighed in affirmation, long and heavy.

“Accepting this fate with ease, estranging yourself from everyone to spare them the pain of losing you . . . It’s been killing you, Arwen. It’s the antithesis of who you are. You are hope incarnate.”

Despite everything, my blood sang at his words. “I didn’t want to be that weak, vulnerable little girl anymore. The person I was when we first met—I couldn’t to go back to that.”

“You told me once that emotions aren’t weaknesses. Take some of your own advice. Admitting you don’t want to die isn’t cowardice. In fact, it’s the opposite.”

It reminded me of something Dagan had said months ago. “There is only true courage in facing what frightens you.” And in Azurine, how vulnerability was what made us human. Gave us something to fight for.

Kane’s expression was softer than I’d ever seen it. He wiped the tears away from under my eyes but didn’t release my face. Instead, he brushed his calloused thumb over my cheek with such gentleness my face began to heat.

“We will find a way out of this,” he murmured.

There was no other way. Not if we wanted to conquer Lazarus, and we both knew it. I opened my mouth to protest, but he continued.

“I told you I used to dream each night of their deaths. Now, I dream of something else, too. I dream of losing you to him the same way. I wake up dripping sweat, heart pounding through my chest, sheets torn around me with your name still lodged in my throat.”

I stilled at his words.

“I said it before, on the ship to Citrine all those weeks ago—I will not let anything happen to you. Nothing, not even the good of all the realms combined, is worth the loss of you. We will find another way.”

I stared at Kane—his still-wet cheeks, his simmering silver eyes lit with nothing but adamant, unbending will. Such determination, and still so calm, so assured . . .

“I want to believe you, but I’m so, so scared to have hope.” He released my face. “I’ll do it with you.”

Then he rose and took both our mugs to the kitchen.

I stood on wobbly legs, blanket still draped around me, and gazed out at the bay windows that overlooked the staggering lake. The black water churned in the storm that had yet to yield, and I wrapped the thick wool tighter around my body.

I felt Kane’s presence behind me as we watched the rain splatter the glass.

“Will it lose its potency if I give you the same speech?” I turned to face him, remembering once again how thoroughly he towered over me. “That you are not to blame for the loss of your mother and brother? For any of them? They chose to fight beside you for a cause they believed in. Their deaths are solely on Lazarus’s conscience.”

Kane’s gaze lingered on the tortured waves behind me. “I think I know that now. It’s the things I’ve done since . . . what my revenge has driven me to . . . that I’m not sure I can recover from.”

“You can. You have.”

Kane’s eyes dropped to mine, pupils flaring. “I planned to use you. To murder my father. Knowing it would . . .”

“We were different people then.” “I’ll regret it as long as I live.”

I didn’t have it in me to argue with him. So I only said, “I’m so tired.” “Let’s get you to bed.”

Kane took my hand in his and led me past the living room and through a narrow hallway adorned with paintings and candles and leathery books before opening the door at the end.

His bedroom was decorated similarly to the rest of the cottage. Rich and intimate, comfortable, soft. Dark wooden beams crossed the lofted pale ceiling, white and cream candles peppered the space. A simple milky-white bed with a carved driftwood headboard was piled high with too many fluffed pillows. Two glass-encased oil lamps had been placed on either wicker bedside table, and a warm, woven blue rug flattened beneath my toes.

While I ogled his private room with little dignity, Kane lit one glass oil lamp and opened a broad walnut wardrobe to pull out a cotton shirt that matched his eyes. He held it toward me. “You can sleep in this if you’d like.”

A bookcase stuffed with crinkling spines and tattered pages stood in one corner beside large windows that looked out upon the obsidian lake. Beneath them sat a chaise with a worn gray pillow and a thick fur slung across it. An ideal spot for reading and watching the boats and waves below. There was a hearth in here, too, and Kane retrieved two logs from a seagrass basket and crouched to light another warming, crackling fire.

The rain pattered against the shingled roof. When the hearth was good and roaring, he stood, and we stared at each other, the single oil lamp dancing shadows across both of our faces. Close enough to touch, neither of us moving to do so.

The mere inches between us twitched and quivered with energy.

“I’m going to sleep on the couch, out there,” he said, while at the same time, I said, “Will you stay with me?”

I swallowed awkwardly. “Never mind.” I balled the shirt up in my hands and looked anywhere but his eyes.

“Sure,” he said, before raising a hand overhead, grasping his shirt from the back of his neck and yanking it off in one fluid movement to reveal his

toned chest. He crawled into the side of the bed without the lit lamp and turned his eyes away.

I knew he wouldn’t look, but for some reason, my heart raced as I dropped the thick blanket to the floor and lifted my flowing blouse up and over my head. I shimmied from my leather pants, placing them on the chaise and leaving me standing in my undergarments.

Blood pumping wildly in my veins, I tucked my hands behind my back, along my spine, to unclasp the shallow bodice, lifted it off my body, and threw on the gray shirt before crawling into the other side of the bed and snuffing out the oil lamp.

The sheets were cool and thick but warmed by Kane’s body heat across from me. I turned to face the window, rain still dribbling down in rivulets, and the mattress shifted as Kane positioned a pillow to his comfort.

We lay in silence save for the storm and that crackling hearth, which emitted a soft glow and a bleary warmth through the room.

“Comfortable?” Kane asked quietly. “Yes. You?”

“Mhm.”

“You don’t have to stay in here with me.” “I’d never leave you alone, bird.”

“Don’t you know I love you, Arwen?”

Tears I couldn’t quite explain pricked at my eyes, and I hoped he couldn’t hear them slip down my cheeks.