At the same moment, she felt the impulse to back away. What could Malphas sense down that mysterious, ephemeral connection he had established with them?

All this time, while she couldn’t fully trust Ferion, she also knew she couldn’t fully trust herself.

“Hi, Bel.” Graydon stopped a few feet away and made no attempt to touch her. Silence fell between them and stretched into something intolerable. Finally, he asked, “How are you?”

She lifted one hand and let it drop, at a loss as to what to say.

I miss you.

I want you.

I think about you every day, and when I roll over half asleep in bed, my hand reaches for yours, but you’re not there. You’re never there.

You never were.

Every word of Malphas’s bargain was emblazoned in her memory. As she ran over the words in her mind, she remembered. She could touch him. The terms of the bargain allowed for it. What a hateful thing.

She didn’t even know if Graydon would welcome her touch. She was painfully aware that he had not reached out to touch her.

She asked, “What are you doing here? What’s wrong?”

Even in the uncertain light of the moon, the intensity of his gaze seared her. “What if I wanted to see you?”

Where had pleasantries gone? Those social niceties one said when encountering an acquaintance one hadn’t seen in a long time. Without the trappings of a political function or public gathering to stop them, they had plunged immediately into a raw, intimate place.

Her breathing turned ragged. “You wouldn’t come here just to see me. Not after all this time.”

“I wouldn’t?” His hands tightened into fists. “One of the hardest things I ever did was leave you with the healers, back in January. I couldn’t stay by your side – none of them would have let me, so I had to completely leave the demesne. The only thing I could stand to do was go back to the Other land and help from that end. Since then, I’ve scoured every online news source for how you were doing, and how hard you’ve worked to help the recovery effort.”

She had done everything she could think to do for the demesne. From the moment she had left her sickbed, she had worked every day for the last six months until she dropped from exhaustion.

Now, when people came to her for help or advice, she gave it to them by rote, because part of her couldn’t help but answer, even as she wondered if she really had anything left to give.

Wrapping her arms around her middle, she confessed, “I read everything I can about New York and the Wyr demesne, just so that I can see your name.”

His voice lowered. “From time to time, I’ve slipped down to Charleston. I look at the houses for sale. The ones with a big, private yard.”

His words were quiet, even gentle. They devastated her completely. Before she quite realized what she was doing, she flung herself at him in an uncontrolled lunge, blindly trusting him to catch her.

As she collided against his body, his arms slammed around her. He gripped her so tightly, she knew his hold would leave bruises, and she welcomed it. She didn’t care.

He was breathing as heavily as she, as if he had been running for a very long time. Burying his face in her hair, he muttered, “I would walk from room to room in those empty houses and wonder if you still thought of me.”

“Oh gods.” The words felt wrenched out of her. She couldn’t hold him any tighter than she already did, but she still wasn’t close enough. She wanted to climb up his body, open his skin, crawl inside and never leave. “I’ve wondered if you thought of me too. I’ve wondered if you moved on, or if you’ve been with someone else. I didn’t have the right to ask. I still don’t.”

“I haven’t been with anyone else,” he murmured, cradling her. “Have you?”

Her arms tightened around his neck. “No,” she whispered. “I haven’t found anybody who can replace the memory of being with you. What am I saying? That makes it sound like I’ve been looking, and I haven’t. I… I’m unbalanced and obsessive. I wouldn’t recommend living this way to anyone, and yet, I still can’t give up the thought of you.”

“Good,” he said between his teeth. He gripped her head in both hands, holding her with such tense care, she could feel the tension vibrating through his big body.

Tilting her face up to his, he held his mouth just over hers. Not quite touching or kissing, but so close she could feel the heat from his lips. She shook with the desire to cross that tiny distance and kiss him.

How could this have happened between them so long ago? It felt as if it had been yesterday. Her voice wobbled. “This is why I’ve never tried to see you alone. One look at you, one touch, five minutes, and it all spills out.”

He growled, “Don’t be balanced, Bel. Don’t turn away or find someone else. Wait for me. Wait to see what we can have together. You said it once, don’t you remember? Holding your ground is not passivity. Work for this. Stay the course.”

She touched his mouth with shaking fingers. “What course is there? We’ve been living in a trap for two hundred years. Now Ferion is Lord of the demesne, and I – I don’t know him anymore.”

“What do you mean?” He massaged her temples with both callused thumbs.

“Once I knew he was a good man who made a few bad mistakes. Now, mostly he says and does the right thing, but sometimes I find him watching me. I don’t know who’s looking out of his eyes, or what he’s thinking, or how much Malphas might have twisted him.”

When emotion clogged her throat, she had to stop. Memories from very long ago played through her mind. As a towheaded, Elven boy, Ferion had been intelligent, loving and mischievous. How she missed that boy, with a deep, specific pain that only a parent who has become estranged from her child could truly understand.