Page 151 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

He pulled my cloak off in one move, reaching to inspect my arm. “Damn it, Rora. Told you I’d deal with them.”

“No, they have to know the White Veil is still around. Do you think anyone else saw me?”

“Do you think I care about it when you’re bleeding?” Malik lifted me up in his arms and faded us to Tenebrose.

“I hurt my arm, my legs work just fine,” I said, wiggling them.

“I’ll fix that too in a moment, don’t worry.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle.

He looked down at me, his brown eyes dancing and glazing with amusement. “I’m funny, aren’t I?”

I nodded.

“Give me your words, Thora. You know I love it when you stroke my ego. Among other things.”

“You’re a funny guy, Mal.”

“Mal, huh?”

I’d practised. Couldn’t count how many times I’d said his name to myself this morning alone. “I know so many ways to ruin you, I might as well call you Mal, right?”

He stopped in the middle of the corridor and looked down at me, his brows slowly pulling together the more he looked at me.

Had I said something wrong?

Then he lowered his lips to mine and kissed me. Tenderly at first. In the midst of it, the kiss turned burning, scorching, painful.

He was going to leave me again. And this would all be but a memory.

The realisation hit me so suddenly that I shuddered.

“One way, not many,” he said. “I’ve grown past the rest of the stuff I’ve told you, they can’t hurt me anymore. But there is one.”

“Which?”

“Don’t figure it out, I’m not ready to be ruined just yet.”

“Alright,” I said, running my hand through his hair. “I’ll spare you.”

“You’re so kind to me, my liege.” He chased more kisses up to my face. “Don’t go around getting hurt, Thora.”

“If you promise me the same.”

He sighed. “You’re a menace, you know that?”

“Funny word used to say incredible, amazing, blinding, beautiful, spectacular.”

“Mhm,” he hummed, resuming our journey to my room—ours.

Once he put me on the bed and got my heavy cloak off, he went to the bathroom and returned with a wet cloth, washing the blood off the cut on my forearm. “What?” he asked, concentrating on applying a burning salve to the shallow cut.

“Why do you think I have something to say?”

He glanced up at me briefly before resuming to treat the cut like I’d been injured beyond hope. “You don’t?”

“Hurry.”