Page 80 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

“It’s Sky—” I groaned in frustration. The idiot was drunk in whatever the healers had given him. “Never mind, as if it means anything.”

His grip on me tightened just slightly—possessively. “Means you are mine.”

A wicked smirk rose on my lips. “We have never consummated our marriage, isn’t that fraudulent?”

He wrapped his other hand over my throat and pulled me closer to him. I shuddered. “Try calling it off.” He nudged my nose with his, his warm breath kissing my lips. “You have no idea, Snow, how long I’ve wanted you for. Do you think I’d let you go after going through all that to make you mine?”

His.

“What were you thinking?” I whispered my echoing thoughts. “Letting your council arrange this bargain with my father.”

He looked like he was measuring my truth in that question. “That we are desperate.”

“What were you thinking when you came to guard me in Isjord?”

“That no one better than I will guard you.”

I shook my head. “What were you thinking when you spoke to me?”

His hand moved to cup my face and his stare turned drunk and drowsy with something else. “Gods, I think I’ve met the she-evil. The prettiest she-evil. So fucking smart, too. And funny—so funny. I wanted to eat her words and her sounds, taste them on my tongue and salvage them however I could.”

My pulse stuttered and stumbled trying to catch the steady beat his words had stirred. “When you touched me?”

His tender touch moved to trace the bridge of my nose down to my mouth, and my eyes drew shut. When he spoke, his voice was gravel and silk at the same time, “That by the gods I was fucked. I never wanted to stop doing it—to touch and learn every corner and curve of yours. You were my most selfish act, but the one I regret the least.” He dragged my bottom lip down with his thumb. “Perhaps I don’t regret it at all.”

“I would have killed you that day.”

“And I would have let you.”

My brows furrowed. I didn’t understand. Why did his words feel so true? “Why?”

“Because seeing you happy, seeing you feel free from your past is what I wished from the stars every night.”

I hated how genuine those silver eyes were when he spoke. I hated how gentle and soft they became each time he told me he loved me. “Sometimes I could almost believe you. You have that about you.”

Pulling me down, he rested my forehead on his. “You believe me, I know it.”

I shook my head, struggling to breathe in this closeness—struggling to keep my thoughts straight after…after he’d almost died in my arms. “Why would you pretend in Isjord?”

“Because,” he said, his eyes dropping to my lips as he pulled me closer to him. I thought he would leave me with that vague answer as he had done most times, but he added, “I told you that I am a very bad man, my love. The chance was there and I took it. To see and be with the woman I was going to marry.”

I rolled my eyes and he chuckled. A chuckle that turned to a throaty groan and then a cough. I hated how worry was my first reaction.

“Lay with me.”

“No,” I said, pushing back.

With a pained groan, he lifted himself up and caught onto my arm, pulling me to him. He had too much strength for someone so injured. “The thought that I might have died today without getting to hold you one more time made me madder than dying,” he breathed in my ear. “So I am going to hold you. And you’re going to let me.”

I tried to struggle. I did. But I didn’t want to. “With a condition,” I said, spinning to him. “Tell me what is wrong with Mal.”

He frowned. “Why would there be something wrong with him?”

Surely he had noticed. “He looks strangely at me. Like he is…sad.” That made me cringe.

He went still, his chest raising quicker. I waited for him to say something. Comment something like Cai would—like it’s all in my head. Or at least tell me it’s nothing that matters.

I looked up at him. “Will you not tell me why?”