It hurt, how good this felt. His mouth against hers. The solid press of his body against her. Surrendering to the storm of her emotions instead of fighting. Staying, instead of running, always running.

She’d known it for a while now. Hal Cavendish, who held her against him like he’d die if she slipped away, was no monster. She wanted to cling to this version of him—hers—and never let him go.

But now he was drawing back, dragging a humiliating low whine from her throat. He leaned his forehead against hers, and when she opened her eyes, she saw his pupils blown wide, ringed like the full moon in cobalt blue. Everything went still as a winter night. She tried to find the meaning in that look, in what he wouldn’t say to her aloud. Her head was still spinning, her body wound tight. So she settled into the stillness. Nose to nose in the dark, inhaling every ragged breath he let out.

She could have cried at the sight of him, so perfect, so ruined. She’d ruffled his hair and reddened his lips. Without realizing it, she must have unbuttoned his shirt, and now, she let her fingers trace the line of his bare collarbones. Hal twisted a lock of her hair around his finger and watched the strands separate with such raptness, it was as though they were spun from gold. It was an unfamiliar bliss to casually touch and be touched.

One that she couldn’t cherish for long.

Wren worried one of his loose buttons between the pads of her fingers, then laid her palm flat against his bare chest to feel the warmth. “I’m so afraid of what’ll happen.”

He didn’t respond at first. The sounds of distant conversations and the wind as it rocked the house filled the silence. Finally, his voice vibrated against her palm. “I am, too.”

“Are you? I’m still getting used to the idea of you being scared of anything.”

“Once, I feared nothing.” Hal traced absentminded patterns on the small of her back. “In Vesria, they say death is a blessing—that we return to nothing, our suffering ended. That it’s an honor to die for your country. Once, I believed that.”

“But now?”

“Now, I believe death is not so light a thing. I haven’t stopped thinking about what you asked. What will we do after there’s peace? Until coming here, I don’t know if I ever made a single decision for myself. I became a soldier because it was expected of me. I’ll become the grand magistrate because that is my duty to our people. That’s the end point of my path, and I’ve never looked back. It does me no good to dream of what could’ve been. But to choose something, truly, for myself? To hope? That terrifies me.”

“And what do you want?” she whispered.