Evie


    “Didn’t you say something about never turning your back on an adversary?” Evie asked, straining on her tiptoes to keep her leverage with her dagger at Trystan’s neck.


    She didn’t keep it long.


    In a sudden jolt, she was flipped around,nding against the wall. Her dagger was flung inside the open barn door.


    “Go away,” Trystan growled, releasing her and stalking inside the quiet, empty barn. “And you are not my adversary; you are my aplice, remember?”


    She stalked in after him. “You can’t just say you love me and then walk away like you were professing devotion to your favorite soup!”


    “I don’t like soup.”


    Evie screamed into her hands.


    “Sage, I am exhausted and hoped to get a few moments’ rest before my mother makes her next homicide attempt on me.” He gestured toward a smaller room off the main barn entrance with a small cot in the corner.


    Slow realization dawned, and a horrifying thought took over.


    “Did you say it to spite her?”


    Trystan’s eyes were sharp on her as he whipped around. “What?”


    “Did you say all of that to spite your mother? The love confession, all those things you said about how you feel about me?”


    He was silent, and Evie’s heart shattered, splintering, puncturing ces in her chest she didn’t know existed until that moment. She was cold, clothes soaked, and her hair was drying in wild ringlets that reflected the fric nature of her feelings.


    She took a step back toward the door, choking on a sob as she sprinted away, but she didn’t make it far. The Viin was at her side, mming the door shut in front of her, grabbing both of her cheeks, cradling them in his hands.


    “No,” he rasped out, eyes searching, fear and agony in his gaze. “Damn you. I couldn’t”—he shook—“I couldn’t stand by and allow my mother to say I wasn’t capable of feeling. Not when the truth is so tant it would be an insult to you to im anything else.”


    Her eyes burned, and she sounded like a rusty door hinge when she said, “You love me?”


    His lips drifted closer, his eyes closing as his forehead pressed against hers, a rightness in every ce they touched. “If that’s what this awful feeling in my chest is, if that’s why I can’t imagine my life without you, if that’s what love is—then yes, Evie. I love you so much it’s terrible.”


    She let out a brokenugh.


    “What is funny?”


    Sheid her lips to his in answer, and the world turned into something new, something colorful again, something without pain, or worry, or betrayal. Just lips touching, just electric waves through her body, shooting straight for her pounding heart.


    Just his hands, clutching her face like a lifeline, moving her head so he could kiss her deeper, breathing heavily when their lips parted. Her fingers glided over his jaw, and if looks could physically grip a person, his touched her all over in response.


    The ze in his eyes spoke to a sense of hopelessness within him. “Sage, what about destiny? The prophecy—”


    She put a finger over his lips to stop him from talking, and the heat from his breath sent a chill down her neck. “All I need to hear is that you love me. That you want this. Forever.”


    There was no hesitation in his voice when he said, “I want you. Forever.”


    Everything inside Evie was white-hot. “Then let’s pretend none of those other things exist right now.”


    He frowned. “I am The Viin. I do not pretend.”


    She kissed him deeply, holding his cheeks gently in her hands, gliding her fingers up and down as she touched her tongue to his lower lip.


    He jerked back, staring at her, wide-eyed, for several long seconds before saying evenly, “I was pretending when I said that.”


    She was swept off her feet secondster, tossed onto the cot with a squeak and a small bounce as he came down on top of her. The storm thundered on, lightning shing through the small window, gifting Evie with a quick view of Trystan’s stomach muscles as he pulled his damp shirt over his head. His bare chest brushed her damp, corseted one and she said a small prayer of thanks that at least, in this moment, Rennedawn’s curse seemed to be keeping Trystan’s death magic at bay. It was nowhere to be found.


    She wasn’t cold anymore; she wasn’t sure she’d ever be cold again.


    Her sexual experiences, in practice, were limited, despite how imaginative her books could get—so she really had little to which she mightpare this feeling of her world shifting at every point their skin touched. But there was no possible way anything could feel better.


    Every missing piece of her felt like it hade home.


    He went to her corset strings, and his fingers slipped. He frowned at the tightly boundces. “This is difficult when you’re wet.”


    “I thought that was supposed to make it easier,” she said cheekily.


    He looked so scandalized, Evie cackled. “I meant your corset, little tornado.”


    “Why do you call me that?” she asked softly, slowly pulling her corset strings free. He watched, enraptured by the movements of her fingers.


    “Because, much like a cyclone, you sweep everything up, leaving it all in a different ce.”


    Somewhere in the process of pulling the corset strings, he’d taken over. Her breaths came easier as each string was loosened. “In other words, I leave everything in the wrong ce?”


    “No,” he whispered, spreading each side of her corset open, nothing but her chemise covering her now. He bent to say the next words right into her ear. “You make everything right.”


    They were kissing then; she didn’t know who moved first, couldn’t tell, as they’d both reached for each other in a frenzy, not knowing how much time they had before one of them stuck their foot in their mouth and got in their own way. It was a finely honed skill that neither wanted anything to do with in this moment.


    “Until the rain stops.” She sighed as he pulled the chemise downward, revealing her breasts. He immediately covered them with small kisses, making a trail of them down her sternum. “We can stay in our bubble until the rain stops,” she reasoned.


    “I’ll pray for a torrential downpour,” he replied with a small grin, his mouth finding hers again as he lifted the hem of her chemise with one hand, the fingers of his other grazing her thigh. “I’m going to regret telling you thister, but I’ve spent a humiliating amount of time thinking about your thighs.” He squeezed her right one, and she felt warm all over.


    She blinked down at them, blushing when she saw how high the chemise had moved. “My thighs? You think about my thighs?”


    “Yes, because I’m depraved,” he said gruffly, his fingers drifting higher, giving her a jittery feeling with every inch he moved.


    “That’s—” She was beginning to have trouble thinking or speaking. “That’s hardly depraved, Evil Overlord.”


    His eyes smoldered down at her as he began to stroke a part of her that made her go beet red, but he looked down upon her like he’d just made a grand discovery. “I knew the blush went lower than your neckline.”


    She couldn’t believe she was about tough at a time like this. “Is that something you’ve been contemting?” she asked incredulously.


    But she was silenced with his mouth and didn’t mind.


    And there was no more talking after that.


    Just sighs. Moans. Brief pauses to catch their breath before diving back into each other once more. She stroked the gold band around his biceps, and he folded his hand over the gold band around her pinky.


    The sensations in her climbed as he continued the motions, kissing her neck, her cheeks. Pulling back as he brushed a gentle hand down the scar on her shoulder, which glowed in colorful pulses. “I will stop. You need only tell me, and I will stop.”


    “I don’t want you to stop. Ever,” she said, going for the cket of his pants, undoing the buttons with eager fingers, only stopping when he grabbed her wrists. His dark eyes were molten as he stared at her naked body before looking right into her soul.


    “I need you to know that I will, though.” He was so earnest, so grave. Like he couldn’t have this part of her unless he knew she trusted him fully.


    She pulled him back down toward her, brushing the sides of his face, pushing the hair away and kissing his cheek. “I’ve known that from the moment we met.”


    It wasn’t cation, it was the truth, and it was clearly what Trystan needed to vanquish thest of his doubts. He pulled her in,ying her down with a ferocity, a passion she’d never known and knew she never would with anyone else.


    Clothing was thrown about the room, his hands and lips everywhere, and then he gripped her thighs with reverence as he joined his body with hers. There was nothing but sensation then, nothing but heavy breathing and moans of relief as the wall between them finally came crumbling down.


    When it was over, Evie was boneless, her heart and body wrung free of all feeling and yet simultaneously ovee with nothing but feeling as Trystan dragged her into his arms, her back pressed against his, caging her in protectively. Just as he did the first time they met. And as Evie’s eyes drifted shut, she remembered…


    It had felt this right, even then.


    …


    A few hours passed as they drifted in and out of sleep, and when they awoke, the rain was slowing to a stop.


    Evie shoved up her chemise, then refastened her corset over it from the front, righting herself as best she could, feeling suddenly, uncharacteristically shy. She ttened her curls only for them to pop up again in various, opposing directions. “I hope it was…”


    Trystan did a double take as he fastened his pants. “It was…?”


    She sighed, hating that she was receding back into her blithering. “I hope it was worth it. Waiting, I mean. I know you haven’t done that in a while, and I hope I wasn’t a bad reintroduction or bad in general—”


    She stopped talking when she saw his expression. The kind that was so cut with frustration it defeated any point in arguing. “Evie. In case it wasn’t obvious: You’ve ruined me.”


    Evie didn’t have to guess—she knew it was apliment with the smolder that apanied it.


    The sounds outside dissipated, the storm lightening to a slight pitter-patter.


    They looked at each other a little sadly, but still, there was that small tinge of hope somewhere not so far beyond it. “The rain stopped,” she said.


    Trystan nodded. “The rain stopped.”


    “I’m not giving up on you.” She spoke it aloud so they both understood. “Ever.”


    His eyes bored into hers, the fondness in his gaze like a caress. “Gods help the fool who tries to stand against you, Sage.”


    As the boss slid the door open, Kingsley appeared before it, holding a sign up in Trystan’s direction.


    Finally.


    He swiped the sign angrily, shoving it in his pocket. “I swear when that enchantress turns you back into a man, I’m burning every sign within a fifty-mile radius.”


    Evie stared at his retreating form, wondering if she should have told him about the rouge smeared all over his mouth or the purple mark forming on his neck, but she decided against it because someone else telling him would be much funnier.


    Kingsley croaked up at her.


    Evie smiled. “All right, Kingsley. Let us go make you the prince you once were.”


    Or nothing else would matter any longer. Not love, not loss, not grief, not anger. There would be no point.


    Because if they couldn’t change Kingsley back and fulfill the prophecy?


    Rennedawn as they knew it would be gone.