“Farthest thing from my mind.” His length dug into my core through his pants. My legs twined around him, but he merely held me. My racing heart slowed, and the tight tension faded from my limbs with every trail of his fingers over my back.

“Where do we go from here?” I couldn’t help but ask after some much-needed minutes of recapturing my breath. The uncertainty felt like another war we couldn’t escape.

“We find a way, or we force it.”

“A way that does not involve Rorn dying?” Scythe tensed, and I lifted my head from his neck. “I know it’s not what you might want to hear, but I did love him, and though a part of me longs to kill him with my bare hands for all he’s done to you…” I shook my head, unable to fathom it all. “His death would not fix or erase any of it.”

Scythe tilted my chin, and his brow furrowed as he searched my eyes. “I do not intend to kill him.”

My lips twitched. “But you would like to, and I don’t blame you.”

His eye dropped to my mouth, his own curling. “I’ve imagined doing so more times than you’d care to know.” His smile fell, his attention still upon my lips. “If I’d have freed myself from that chair faster, I daresay I would have.” His features scrunched, and his eye closed. “Never appease him or anyone like that again.”

“I needed the chance to end his antics,” I said, loathing that either male had been in such a position. “It worked.”

“I do not care,” Scythe rumbled. Shifting my hair over my shoulders, he rubbed my arms and sighed. “As much as I want to free my cock from my pants and slide it between your legs to remind you to never make my heart stop like that again, we should soon head back before we make matters worse.”

I shivered, liking that idea too much, considering all that’d just happened. “They cannot get any worse,” I said, smiling sadly.

“Believe me, they always can.” He scented my unfurling desire and cursed. “I should probably tend to you.” His teeth nipped at my ear. “Just in case.”

“In case things go further astray?”

“Exactly.”

I laughed when he licked my pulse, and I cupped his cheeks. My thumbs stroked as I forced him to look at me, nearing the corner of his scarred eye. “He did this to you.”

“He was right when he said he could’ve killed me instead. I was all of thirteen years, and the only training I’d had was from my father when he could escape his duties and come home every other day.”

I leaned forward to place my lips upon the forever-closed eyelid. Scythe stilled, but only for a second. A soft exhale loosened his limbs, even as his hold on me tightened.