Page 231 of The Edge of Darkness

I longed to lie with her in the grass under the stars, to feel her body on mine, our hearts beating as one. My skin flushed the longer she held my stare, and I shuddered as my Aura shifted to the surface.

She set the candle on a flattened stone, then tipped her head back and gazed up at what I had been transfixed by before she’d stepped into view. “Beautiful.”

“Yes, you are.”

A grin pulled at her lips. “I meant the stars, Aremis.”

“They don’t hold a light to you.”

She lowered her gaze to me, and her smile fully surfaced. I gave her one back, but she saw the strain in it. Try as I might, there wasn’t a smile I could offer that was not laced with some sort of lament at my inability to experience the extent of my emotions.

I was often taunted with the dream of being able to give myself to Maeson, freely, without anything holding me back in any aspect—physical, or emotional.

The curse prevented it, not because that’s what it was meant to do, but because it required all of my will in order to control it. If I let myself feel too much of anything else, aside from control, I would slip into a vulnerable state, and the voices—the chaos that was a constant torrent in my mind and soul—would overwhelm me.

To bear the Aether’s power was to share one’s self with it. There was no middle-ground where one existed without the other.

It was hard not to become deeply depressed over it all. There had been so many times that I had to pull myself back from that edge and remind myself that I’d come too far to let it get the best of me. What made it even more difficult now, was that I had finally found someone who I wanted to share everything with, and couldn’t. She was right here, yet we might as well be a thousand miles apart, because I was on this gods-damned leash.

She tilted her head like she could see how deep and dark my thoughts had just been. “Am I interrupting something?”

“Never.”

“Were you praying?”

I nodded.

Her eyes gleamed in the moonlight as she came closer. “What did you pray for?”

Feeling particularly inclined to speak my mind, I answered with the one word that embodied everything I’d petitioned for. Everything I was hoping to achieve when this was all over . . .

“Salvation.”

The word felt like a boulder plunging into a lake with my pride tied to it by a rope.

“Aremis . . .”

The way she looked at me . . . like she wanted to take all my pain away . . .

My fingers brushed against her cheek, then drifted over her smooth skin, down to her lips. I traced them, trying to imagine what they would taste like, how they might feel against mine.

The Aether watched from within, looming like a damn chaperone, reining me back in.

All at once, a wave of frustration crashed over me. “I’m tired, Maeson. I’m so damn tired.” My voice cracked. “I just want to be rid of this power. I want to be able to give you everything—every part of me, all that I have to offer—like Niall can give to Auren. I need to give you that. But this curse . . .” I slammed my fist against the tree. “It reminds me every fucking time that I belong to it! That as long as it’s within me, I can’t let my guard down, or else I risk losing myself.”

She was silent. For so long, she was silent.

Then . . .

“Then I will keep loving you,” she said.

I stilled.

Love?

Did she just say . . .

“Yes. I love you, Aremis. I think I always have—from the moment I met you.”