Page 61 of Dangerous Exile

“No. I won’t hear such ridiculousness from you.” Her arms unfolded and she reached out, her fingers wrapping around his forearm. “You are not death because of a few short minutes in an entire lifetime. Those moments in the whorehouse, those moments that your parents died—they aren’t everything, Talen. They’re not all of you. You have always been so much more.”

His mouth clamped closed. She was denying what he knew full well. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I do.” She nodded, her face solemn as her hand fell away from his arm. “I know because I touched death. Touched it on my own accord. And those minutes do not define me. They can’t.”

His breath stilled in his chest. “Ness, what did you do?”

She let out a breathless scoff, the side of her mouth pulling into a strained smile. “You weren’t the only one that Juliet saved.”

“What happened?” His voice hard, he didn’t want to know what she’d done to herself. Yet hehadto know.

Her head bowed, her shoulders sank as remorse washed over her small frame. “It was just after Gilroy had broken my arm, broken me. Broke me so completely, set so much pain into my body that it was all I thought I had left. My own death. My own death, under my control. My room was high—so high in that castle. I climbed up onto the window and at the very moment I let myself go, falling to freedom, Juliet tackled me away, pulling me back into the room. Pulling me back into life. Yet I still didn’t want it. Hated what she’d done. Hated her actions until…”

His eyes closed for long seconds. To imagine her drowning so far in that pain that she would leave this earth on her own volition set agony deep into his own chest. Her scars, so deep and wounding becoming his own.

His eyes opened and he stared at the top of her bowed head, wanting nothing more than to erase the past for her but knowing he couldn’t. Instead, he prodded her onward. There was nowhere to go but forward. “Until what?”

Her eyes slowly lifted to him, the golden strands in her irises glowing with intensity, a sheen of tears glossing them. “Until I opened my eyes and you were there. You were dead. Long dead. But then you weren’t. You were alive, breathing when you shouldn’t have been. I know death, Talen. And you. You are not death. You are the opposite. You are life. You brought me back to life.”

She stepped closer to him as her chin lifted, her stare desperate as it pinned him. “When you were young, you were funny and smart and mostly kind, except when you got that wicked gleam in your eye and wanted to make me squeal. But your heart…your heart has always beaten gold, no matter the iron you’ve since shackled it in. It is still in you. I’ve seen it. I’ve felt it.”

He closed his eyes to her. “But I don’t remember that—what I was. I don’t remember anything more.”

“Nothing else?”

“I only remember that night. That one night.” His hand lifted, his fingers rubbing across his forehead and eyes. “Why can’t I remember more?”

“I don’t know. But if you remember the worst of it, maybe the rest will follow.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

She worried her lip for long seconds. “Did you recall anything more from that night? What happened after your mother dropped in front of you?”

He shook his head slightly, his eyes still covered, then he shrugged. “Just that I was choked. I remember that. After my mother died, they found out I was alive and I was choked.”

She gasped. “It’s the rasp in your voice. It was never there before. But it is now. I thought it odd, but it makes sense that is where it came from.”

His hand dropped away from his face and he found her eyes. “I couldn’t speak for a long time on the ship. Weeks it took, my throat barely able to let breath in and out, much less talk. That’s how I became Talen. Talen Blackstone. Some old sailor named me because he was sick of calling me boy and he said I had eyes like a hawk—watching everything with intent to strike.”

His eyes opened wider and he swayed, the blackness he’d just emerged from suddenly threatening to swallow him again. “I never remembered that. Never. The memories of it, of my first days on the ship. All of it just slipped away. Forgotten when it never should have been. I should have remembered. Remembered everything.”

He swayed again, his body threatening to collapse and she stepped into him, wrapping her arms around him to balance him, the splint on her left arm jutting into his side.

So unsteady, his body wavering, shards of black cutting across his vision.

His face buried into the top of her head, drowning himself in her scent. “Hold me. Hold me against this. I can’t go into the blackness again.”

Her arms tightened around him. It had to pain her left arm, but dammit, he needed this. Needed her to keep him from slipping away again.

“I have you, Talen. I do. Always.” She pulled her head away from his chest so she could look up at him.

Worry strained her face. Worry he hated. She shouldn’t have to worry, not on him.

But he didn’t know how to stop the blackness from taking over again. How to stay here with her when his mind was determined to make him abandon everything around him.

Abandon her.

Her amber eyes pinned him. “Even if you slip away, I am here. Waiting.”