He did not care that it was raining, or that the tips of his fingers were burned from a brush with the flames inside the inn. He rarely cared about anything else when Roar was around. She melted against him, and did not try to stop him when he pushed back her hood and tangled his uninjured hand in her short, skyfire-white hair.

Despite the cold fall of rain, her lips were fire beneath his own. She met his desperation without a moment’s hesitation, as if she knew that he felt like his heart might burst if he did not pull her as close as possible.

“I couldn’t find you. I thought…”

She quieted him with the soft brush of her lips against his jaw, then his cheek, before resting her forehead against his. She murmured apologies between light, teasing kisses, and Kiran could do nothing but hold her tight within his arms.

When his heart finally slowed to a bearable pace, he pulled back and asked, “What were you doing out at this hour? I thought we agreed the city was not safe.” The words came out harsher than he intended, but one glance around them made clear those words were true as ever. Fear knotted his insides all over again. Even though she was safe. Even though she was in his arms. He was somehow still deathly afraid.

Was this what it meant to be in love? Would he live the rest of his days in a constant state of fear that this one slice of perfection he’d been given would be torn away like every other good thing that had come before her?

The corners of her lips twitched down in a frown before she gave him her practiced blank expression. Sometimes he loathed that look. He never wanted to see her withdrawn and emotionless. And it irked him that he’d had the same expression once upon a time, until she came into his life and smashed it into pieces. Now his emotions were always too near to the surface.

She stepped back slightly, out of the circle of his arms. “I had something I needed to do. Plus, Jinx was with me.”

“I don’t like the idea of the two of you out alone. There’s too much we don’t know about the state of the city.”

“You don’t have to like it.”

As his fear faded, he found frustration filling up the space left behind. “What I don’t like is the fact that you keep hiding things from me. We’re either in this together or we’re not. It cannot be both.”

Roar laid her hand on his chest, directly over his heart. She exhaled and closed her eyes. He wondered if she could feel the way his heart beat harder just at the proximity of her touch.