Total pages in book: 165
Estimated words: 159487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 532(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 159487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 532(@300wpm)
“I’m sorry,” she whispered against his shirt.
Severin closed his eyes.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he told her.
“Yes, I do.” She sniffed and pressed closer. “I brought all this into your life. You and Ravik were best friends before me. You were solid. You had each other. And then I came along and now everything is broken.”
“No.” Severin tightened his arms around her, wishing he could make her believe it by force of will alone. “You didn’t break anything, Cassandra. You made us stop pretending.”
She was quiet for a moment, her cheek pressed to his chest.
“Pretending what?” she asked at last.
Severin looked toward the door again. That was the question, wasn’t it?
He had spent years not answering it. Years burying one night under duty and silence. Years accepting Ravik’s explanation because it was easier to let the Goldsheill ale take the blame than to admit that something real had happened in that pleasure house.
He drew a slow breath.
“There was a night, years ago,” he said quietly. “Before Visslick Prime…before the Hunger Virus. Ravik and I were on shore leave after a brutal campaign, and we went to a pleasure district on Tenebria. There was a woman there—a Tenebrian woman. Beautiful. Clever. Very direct.”
Cassandra lifted her head just enough to look at him.
“Direct how?”
“She wanted us both.” His mouth twisted faintly, though there was no humor in it. “Ravik told her we were not Twin Kindred and that Beast and Blood Kindred did not share females. She told us not to share, then. She told us simply to enjoy her at the same time.”
Cassandra’s eyes widened slightly.
“And did you?”
“Yes.” Severin looked down at his hands. “We had both been drinking. Ravik blamed the ale afterward. I let him…it was easier that way.”
Her voice was soft.
“What happened?”
Severin’s throat tightened. He didn’t want to say it, but the secret had become a poison. Maybe it always had been.
“We kissed. The Tenebrian woman told us to,” he said. “She said we were beautiful together and that we should kiss for her. Ravik laughed at first, as though it was a game. Then he looked at me and I knew…Gods, I knew he wanted it as much as I did.”
“So you kissed him,” Cassandra asked. “That’s all?”
“Yes.” The memory rose inside him, bright and painful. “It was only one kiss. Not long. Not enough and yet too much. For one foolish moment I thought maybe we would speak of it afterward. Maybe we would admit that something had changed.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.” Severin opened his eyes and stared across the suite. “The next morning, he said we had drunk too much Goldsheill ale. I said clearly we had. And that was the end of it.”
Cassandra made a soft sound of sympathy.
“Oh, Severin.”
He shook his head.
“I let it be the end because I was a coward too. I told myself that Ravik needed the lie. I told myself he would never survive facing the truth, and perhaps I was right.” He looked at her. “But I also needed the lie, Cassandra. Because if he had rejected me outright, I don’t know what it would have done to me.”
She reached up and touched his cheek.
“You’ve loved him all this time.”
Severin went very still. He could have denied it—once, he would have. He would have said Ravik was his friend, his shield-brother, his comrade—the male he trusted more than anyone else in the universe. All of that was true—every bit of it.
But that wasn’t all. And now he had to admit it.
“Yes,” he said at last. “I’ve loved him for years. Maybe since the first minute he beat up the bullies that were hurting me.”
“Severin…”
“I know what you’re going to say.” He shook his head. “That love isn’t wrong. That wanting him isn’t wrong. That all the old rules are stupid and cruel and probably written by people who never had to deal with zombie viruses and owl doctors and medically necessary alien sex suites.”
A tearful laugh broke from her lips.
“Well, yes. Something like that.”
He brushed a tear from her cheek with his thumb.
“I love you too, you know, Cassandra.”
“Oh Severin…” She was nibbling her lower lip and her cheeks were flushed.
He looked down at her, letting the truth out—not hiding from it.
“I don’t know when it happened exactly. Perhaps in the bunker when you kept trying to be brave while your whole world had fallen apart. Perhaps when you made Ravik remember himself just by letting him hold you. Perhaps when you looked at both of us and still managed to make jokes about the horny zombie crises instead of collapsing under the weight of it all.”
She gave a shaky laugh.
“Sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying.”
“Yes, you do.” His mouth softened. “But yes, I love you. And I love him. And you brought us together in a way I never thought possible. That is why this hurts so much.”