"I need you to try," River said. "Whatever the elders suggested about managing the tie, whatever the priestess recommended, I need you to try it. Because I would rather sit three rows back for the rest of my life than watch the darkness eat you alive."
River meant it. Every word. The willingness to sit three rows back for the rest of her life was genuine and total, offered with the sincerity of a woman whose love expressed itself through sacrifice and whose sacrifices were getting more expensive and whose credit was infinite because her love didn't have a balance sheet.
Lucian pressed his back against the corridor wall. The scroll in his hand was crumpling. He was squeezing it, his fingers compressing the parchment into a cylinder that was thinner than the document's structural integrity could support, and the squeezing was the only physical outlet available that wouldn't involve putting his fist through the stone.
