Emotionally Constipated

The map was burning, which was inconvenient, but hardly the worst thing that had happened to me this week.

"Craven," I said, leaning back against the cold stone of the parapet. "Stop."

Ten paces away, standing in a posture so rigid he looked like he’d been carved from the basalt cliffs below us, the High Commander of the Silver Wardens did not stop. He was sketching a warding rune into the flagstones with the tip of his broadsword, his jaw clenched so hard I was genuinely concerned he’d shatter a molar. His silver-threaded cloak snapped in the midnight gale, snapping like a whip against his calves.

"The eastern breach is vulnerable," he muttered, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that usually made the novices swoon. Right now, it just sounded like gravel being ground under a millstone. "If the ash-wraiths break the primary threshold before the moon reaches the zenith, the ward collapses. I need to reinforce the binding matrix with a three-tier blood seal."

"You already reinforced it," I pointed out, tossing the smoking corner of the parchment over the edge. It tumbled down into the dark void of the abyss, swallowed by the howling wind. "Twice. Once before dinner, and once while I was trying to explain that we’re out of salt pork."

Craven didn't look at me. He couldn't. Looking at me required moving his neck, and moving his neck required acknowledging that we were standing alone on a freezing tower in the middle of a war zone, thirty minutes after he’d nearly taken a rusted halberd through the chest to keep me from stumbling over a low stone wall.

Instead, he viciously carved another line into the stone. Screeeech.

"It’s tactical," he said stiffly. "A blood seal requires absolute precision."

"It’s a tantrum," I said.

That stopped him. The sword tip hovered a millimeter above the flagstone. His broad shoulders hitched upward, the muscles straining against the midnight-blue wool of his tunic. For a terrifying, breathless second, I thought he might actually turn around and look me in the eye—really look at me, the way he had when the halberd came down, when his hands had caught me by the waist, his fingers pressing so hard they’d left bruises through my leather jerkin.

Then he exhaled, a long, controlled gust of frosted air, and dropped his gaze back to the floor.

"You don't understand the topography of the rift," he said, his tone dangerously neutral. "The magic here operates on ancient, layered principles. It requires—"

"Stop it." I pushed off the parapet and walked toward him, my boots clicking sharply against the stone. "Stop talking about topography. Stop talking about binding matrices. Stop doing geometry with your sword."

He finally lifted his chin, though his grey eyes remained stubbornly fixed on a point somewhere around my left earlobe. "Sky, this is no time for—"

"Stop thinking he’s complex." I threw my hands up in the air, the cold biting instantly into my fingertips. "I’m talking to myself, Craven, but I’m saying it loud enough for you to hear. Stop thinking he’s complex! He’s not complex, he’s just emotionally constipated!"

The silence that followed was so absolute that even the howling mountain wind seemed to hold its breath.

Craven froze. The sword remained embedded a fraction of an inch in the floor. His lips parted slightly, his dark brows drawing down in a look of profound, staggering offense.

"I am... what?" he whispered, as if the words were foreign, disgusting things he’d accidentally plucked out of a swamp.

"You heard me," I said, marching right up to him until I was standing well within his personal space—that invisible, sacred bubble of brooding personal territory he usually guarded with lethal force. I had to tilt my head back to meet his gaze. Or, rather, to meet his jawline, since he was still refusing to look at my eyes. "You spend three days brooding in the war tent, you stare into fires like you're trying to burn secrets out of them, you dive in front of weapons meant for me, and then you spend forty-five minutes lecturing me on defensive architecture because you don't know what to do with your hands!"

"My hands," he repeated, his voice dropping an octave into that dangerous, rumbling register, "are currently maintaining the structural integrity of this entire fortification."

"Your hands," I said, reaching out and grabbing his right wrist, "are shaking."

He flinched—a tiny, microscopic jerk away from my touch, though he didn't pull away. He never pulled away, which was the most infuriating part. He just stood there, letting me hold him while acting like he was being subjected to a slow-acting poison.

"They are not shaking," he growled.

"They are vibrating, Craven. You’re wound so tightly a stiff breeze could snap your spine in half. You think you’re this tragic, brooding hero carrying the weight of the realm on your broad shoulders, but you’re not. You’re just terrified that if you say a single honest sentence out loud, your ribs are going to cave in."

His jaw worked. I watched the muscle tick right beside his mouth, that sharp, stubborn angle of bone and skin that I had spent the last three months dreaming about tracing with my thumb.

"You think this is a game," he said softly. The anger had drained out of his voice, replaced by something much heavier, much more dangerous. The wind picked up again, swirling our cloaks together, tangling the dark wool of his sleeve with the frayed leather of mine. "You think because I don't... because I prefer duty to—to whatever nonsense you expect—"

"What nonsense?" I snapped, stepping closer still, until the silver clasp of his heavy cloak pressed against my chest. "Expecting you to look at me? Expecting you to acknowledge that when you jumped in front of that halberd, you nearly gave me a heart attack?"

"I am the High Commander," he said, but it sounded hollow now, like a shield with the backing beaten out of it. "It was my duty to—"

"Shut up."

"Sky—"

"Shut up, Craven."

I didn't give him a choice. I dropped his wrist, brought both hands up to the lapels of his heavy cloak, and yanked him down.

I expected him to resist. I expected him to plant his boots, to lecture me about military protocol, to give me that infuriating, stoic nod that meant conversation over, back to the trenches.

Instead, he gasped. It was a sharp, ragged intake of air, the sound of a man who had been holding his breath for a century and had suddenly, violently, forgotten how to do anything else.

His hands, which had been frozen at his sides, shot out. One caught me by the small of the back, his fingers biting into my spine with enough force to bruise, hauling me flush against his chest so hard the metal plates of his armor bruised my ribs. The other hand came up to the back of my neck, his large, calloused palm tangling in my hair, gripping me as if he were afraid the wind might blow me away if he let go for even a fraction of a second.

His lips crashed down onto mine.

It wasn't a gentle kiss. It was desperate, clumsy, and bruising—the kiss of a man who had spent months building walls out of stone and duty, only to realize the flood had already broken through the gate. He kissed me like he was drowning and I was the only surface left in the world, his mouth moving over mine with a fierce, punishing hunger that made my knees go weak.

I let out a breathless laugh against his lips, my hands sliding up his chest to grip his shoulders, feeling the heavy, frantic thrum of his heart beneath the layers of wool and steel

When he finally pulled back—just an inch, his forehead resting against mine, both of us breathing raggedly into the freezing mountain air—his eyes were wide, dark, and utterly shattered.

"You," he whispered, his voice trembling in a way I had never, ever heard before. "You talk entirely too much."

I grinned, my fingers sliding up into the dark strands of his hair at the nape of his neck, feeling the heat radiating off his skin.

"And you," I murmured, pressing another quick, hard kiss to the corner of his trembling mouth, "are a disaster."

Craven closed his eyes. A single, ragged sigh shuddered through his entire frame, the last of his armor finally crumbling to dust.

"I hate you," he muttered, though his arm tightened around my waist until I couldn't tell where I ended and he began.

"No, you don't," I said, resting my cheek against the cold steel of his breastplate, right over the frantic, beautiful chaos of his heart. "You just need to practice your vocabulary."

He didn't answer. He just buried his face in my hair, holding me against the dark and the wind, while the wards hummed softly in the stone beneath our feet.