Chapter 212: What He Had Lost
Theron remained above her, his golden eyes searching her face as though seeing her for the first time.
The eastern sky had begun to brighten, bathing her in the pale blue light before sunrise. It caught in the loose strands of her blonde hair, turning them almost golden at their edges. Her lashes cast delicate shadows across her cheeks, still flushed from exertion, and tiny beads of perspiration glimmered upon her skin like scattered dew.
She was beautiful.
No...
Beautiful was too simple a word.
Only moments ago, she had carried an entire underground warehouse through the night sky as though she had rewritten the laws of magic themselves. She had saved the kingdom where politics had failed. She had stood before soldiers, spoken without fear, and shouldered a burden no one else had even imagined possible.
She was extraordinary.
And somehow...
She was looking at him with the same quiet affection she always did, as though none of that mattered... As though he was still the one she had chosen to see.
A strange ache tightened inside his chest.
All evening, he had tried to protect her.
Yet, in the end...
She had been the one who had carried them all.
A reward? For this incredible woman? What could he give her?
He had never felt smaller, nor had he ever admired someone so completely.
His thumb brushed lightly along her cheek before he even realized he had moved.
"Aveline..."
She answered with nothing more than a soft hum, her eyes never leaving his.
He leaned down.
This time, when their lips met, there was no uncertainty.
It was not the hesitant kiss of two people surprised by their own feelings.
It was deliberate.
He kissed her slowly, as though trying to memorize the feeling she awakened inside him. The world beyond the mountain disappeared until there was only the warmth of her lips, the quiet rhythm of her breathing, and the impossible sense that he had been searching for this without ever knowing it.
When he drew back for a breath, he found himself unable to go far.
His forehead rested lightly against hers.
He should have stopped. He knew he should. Instead, he kissed her again, longer this time.
Something stirred deep within him; something older than memory. His body recognized her long before his mind ever could.
A hunger he could neither explain nor deny unfurled quietly inside him, answering her nearness with an instinct so familiar that it unsettled him. It was as though the days stolen from him had never reached this part of his heart. Whatever had been erased, this remained untouched.
His pulse quickened. Every instinct urged him closer. He had spent weeks telling himself that his fascination with her was curiosity. That his protectiveness was responsibility. That the strange pull he felt whenever she smiled at him was merely gratitude.
Now...
He could no longer lie to himself. Something inside him had always belonged to her.
Aveline smiled into the kiss, her heart so full it almost hurt.
There it was... she felt the difference in his kiss this time. She could feel it in the tenderness with which he held her, in the way he lingered even after the kiss should have ended, and in the quiet reverence that had replaced the uncertainty in his eyes.
A warmth spread through her chest.
That’s more like it.
A small, satisfied laugh almost escaped her.
I knew you had it in you.
After all...
She had already decided.
Vaelor Theron Blackwyre was going to be her husband. And she intended to make sure he realized it, too.
His kisses did not stop. When Aveline finally needed a breath, he only trailed them from her lips to the curve of her jaw and the delicate line of her neck, as though he could not quite bring himself to leave her.
The hood Aelion had given her had slipped beneath his restless hands, and he drew it down with a quiet impatience that made her pulse flutter. She let him. Her fingers curled around the front of his collar, then found the knot of his tie and tugged with just enough force to draw him closer again.
But before she could undo more, Theron caught her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles, his breathing uneven against the cool mountain air.
He lifted his head then, black eyes half-lidded as he looked down at her, and for a moment the intensity in his gaze made her forget the ache in her back and the rough stone beneath them.
Aveline reached for him again, and he answered her kiss, but only briefly before drawing back with the kind of restraint that felt almost more dangerous than surrender.
"Not like this," he murmured, though the words seemed to cost him.
Aveline frowned at once, though there was less protest in her expression than she would have liked to admit. He kissed the side of her hand again, his thumb brushing lightly over her skin as if he were steadying himself as much as he was steadying her.
"On a bed," he said, his voice low and unsteady with desire he was clearly forcing himself to contain, "with rose petals, and something soft and warm and worthy of you. Not on a rocky mountain."
He did not remember the past times they were intimate, but he wanted the next time, his first time, to be perfect.
Despite herself, Aveline rolled her eyes, though the corner of her mouth betrayed her.
Who cared where they were?
Her own body felt too warm, too aware of him, too eager to let reason matter. She tried to undo his shirt then, more out of instinct than thought, but he intercepted her hand once more and kissed it with an almost reverent gentleness.
When he looked at her again, his expression had changed. The heat in his eyes was still there, but it was joined now by something steadier, something that made her breath catch for an entirely different reason.
He was respecting her. Just... treating her like she mattered.
Aveline’s annoyance softened into something quieter, something almost tender. Perhaps she was being unreasonable. Perhaps she could afford to let him have his way this once. Her back was beginning to protest the cold stone anyway, and if he wanted to be romantic about it, she could hardly blame him.
Maybe their first time together should be somewhere warmer, softer, with no rocks digging into her spine and no battlefield echoing in the distance.
"Fine," she muttered at last, though she could not entirely hide the disappointed edge in her voice.
Theron kissed her again, this time with a relieved breath that brushed hot against her cheek, and his hand came up to cradle her face as if she were something precious enough to break. His black eyes searched hers for a long moment before he spoke again, his voice rough with feeling.
"How are you real?"
The words slipped through her like a hand through water, gentle and startling all at once. Aveline leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the little dip in his chin, smiling when his breath caught. "You made me this way," she whispered.
His brow furrowed faintly.
She had not meant to say it quite so plainly, but once the words had begun, she could not take them back. There had been a time when she had thought herself worth less than the dirt beneath her feet, when she had carried herself like something that deserved only silence, hunger, and neglect.
She had not known how to stand straight. She had not known how to look at herself without flinching.
And then there had been him, looking at her as though none of that ugliness were true, as though she were something precious and fiercely worth keeping.
"It was you, Theron," she said, her voice softening with the truth of it. "You made me think I was worth something. Worthy enough to be myself."
Before she could stop it, her eyes misted. She looked away for a heartbeat, irritated with herself for the weakness of it, but the feeling would not be brushed aside.
She was not normal, not ordinary, not some fragile thing that had simply become beautiful by chance. She had become who she was now because someone had once looked at her with devotion and refused to let her remain broken.
It had been his love, his certainty, his stubborn faith in her, that had taught her how to be unapologetically herself.
Theron felt the answer strike him harder than any blade.
He had done that for her?
The realization hollowed him out with a strange, aching tenderness. Then what, he wondered, had she done for him? What part of himself had she shaped without his knowing? What had been lost when he lost her?
The memories were not merely fragments of a past he could not reach. They were pieces of who he had once been, and perhaps pieces of who he was still meant to become. By forgetting her, he had lost more than a history.
He had lost a part of himself.
Was there a way to get it back?
He slipped his hand under her neck and lay beside her, looking at her.
"You gave the cotton to me. What about the rebels? They won’t be happy," he said.
Aveline pressed her lips and let out a deep breath.
That was a good question.