She had to take another controlling breath. She was glad he stood behind her so she didn’t have to look at him. “I did not expect what happened—but I did not sit back and watch while your family risked everything, Jes. I helped with every power I had.”

She stopped speaking because there was nothing more to say, and because if she allowed herself to say another sentence, she would scream her throat raw. She hoped what she’d told him was enough to allow Jes to keep the fragile balance he’d ridden for so much longer than most of his kind. She should have stayed away from him, should have left after the first time they kissed.

“I’ve never seen you cry before,” said Jes’s soft voice, then his hand was touching her cheek. When it touched her skin, he hissed softly, as a man who burned himself on a cinder might.

She tried to pull her emotions under control, tried to step away so she wouldn’t hurt him. She didn’t want to hurt him any more.

“Shh,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders and turning her.

She resisted because she didn’t want him to look at her, her face blotched, her eyes swollen. She didn’t want to look at him and see the distance that the knowledge of what she once had been would put between them. But he was stronger than she, and persistent. In the end, she chose to keep what little dignity she had left rather than fight him.

His face was too close for her to see his expression, she only caught a glimpse of velvet-dark eyes before he bent his head to lick gently at the cut on her lip.

“I don’t want to hurt you either,” he said. “Neither of us does. I’m sorry. I believe you, I believe you. I was almost certain you wouldn’t betray us—but the Guardian had to believe, too. He wouldn’t listen to me. Hush now.”

He kissed her, a kiss as different from his last kiss as a palace from a midden: closed mouth and soft lips, tender and loving.

“My mother says Ravens are good at keeping secrets; I think she is right,” he murmured. “My father says it’s not safe to keep secrets from yourself. I think he is right, too.”

His hands drifted from her shoulders when she stopped pulling away. Lightly, his right hand slid over her breast and stopped just over her navel, as if he sensed the hot ball of grief, pain, and anger she’d buried there.

“I’m hurting you,” she said, but she couldn’t force herself to back away from his touch. “I don’t want to hurt you. Give me some time, and I’ll—”

“Bury it again?” he said, his voice a soft rumble against her ear. “I don’t think that is wise.” He kissed her ear and down her neck, nibbling gently as he loosened the tie that kept the neckline of her dress shut.

She would have sworn passion had nothing new to teach her, but she found under Jes’s inexperienced but intuitive touch, she was wrong. He had barely begun, and she trembled, caught in the fear that he might stop: stop touching her, stop talking to her in that velvet voice… stop loving her.

“Please,” she said, her voice no louder than his. Please don’t let me hurt you. Please touch me. Please love me. She would allow herself to say none of it.

He met her gaze and smiled, Jes and Guardian both. “Don’t worry so,” he said, before continuing the journey he’d just begun.

His mouth followed her skin down her throat to her collarbone while his hands trailed heat down the curve of her spine, then across to her hips. He stopped with his mouth over her navel, his head against that ache of grief and memory his hand had found earlier.

“Here,” he said. “So much hurt. Let me loosen it for you.” He pressed his forehead against her, just below her ribs. And the warmth of him softened the old pain gently, then the Guardian’s coolness eased the ache.

“Don’t keep your hate and pain so tightly,” the Guardian said, his voice as gentle as Jes’s had been. “I share my rage with Jes, and it lessens. Some hurts need the light of day, Hennea, so that they may be counted and let fly.”

She sighed and felt the ugliness she had carried for so long in secret, hidden even from herself, writhe under the light he would bring to it.

“So many dead,” Jes said, his voice subtly softer than the Guardian’s. “Too many to keep here.” His callused hand brushed tenderly over her heart. “They were beloved by you, and loved you. It would hurt them to know they caused you such anguish. Let them go.”

“You can’t read my mind,” she said, shaken by the accuracy of his words.

“No,” he said. “But I feel what you feel, and I remember the ones I have lost along the way, and the pain is the same. The cause the same.” He smiled against her cheek; she could feel his dimple. “Selfishness.”

“Selfishness?” It stung as if he were trivializing her suffering. She tried to pull away.

He laughed, low in his throat, and pulled her more tightly against him. The vibration of the Guardian’s quiet laughter touched something deep inside, and she yielded to him again.

“Selfish,” he said again. “I do not know where the dead go.” Jes laughed this time, the sound less graceful, less beautiful, but more joyous. “But they do go and leave their bodies behind, I’ve seen it. I’ve felt it. They go in joy, Hennea, the pain and fear is left with the ones who stay behind and mourn. You and I. And the pain we feel is for ourselves. I will never again see my little sister, Mehalla, who died the year Rinnie was born, and it makes me sad. For me. And I mourn even now, though she is eleven years dead. It is not bad that I mourn, but it is selfish.” He slid down to kiss her belly, then rubbed his cheek against her, his afternoon beard stubble catching on her shirt.

“Let their deaths go,” he said. “Let them leave off their haunting of your heart.”

He waited, as if he were listening for something she couldn’t hear. His patience, and the warmth of his arms around her—as if he were protecting her from all harm—was too much to bear.

“Ah, that’s it,” he said, coming back to his feet so she could bury her face against his chest as she sobbed. “We cry, too, the Guardian and I.” He rocked her softly and sang a lullaby, like a mother soothing an overly tired child. He wasn’t Bard, but his voice was lovely all the same.

When she pulled back, he wiped her cheeks with his hands. “You need to forgive them,” he told her. “They are long dead, and your anger harms only you. Forgive them for dying and leaving you behind. Forgive Hinnum, if it was he, who loved you too much to allow you death to salve your pain.”

Hennea felt raw. “You are a child,” she whispered. “How can you know such things?”

The step she took away from him was more of a stumble than the firm distance-setting stride she’d intended, but it served its purpose. His touch was too unsettling, too necessary.

He smiled. “Some truths are truths, no matter who says them. My father knows a lot of them. ‘Forgiveness benefits you more than those you forgive’ is one of his favorites.”

The smile faded, and his eyes darkened. “You lost so much,” he said, and she couldn’t tell who spoke, Jes or the Guardian. “Is there nothing you found afterward? Were no gifts given to you?”

She stared at him, trying to maintain her dignity; but he waited patiently, a smile lurking just below the surface of his eyes.

“You,” she said.

He smiled again and closed the distance between them. As he pulled her into a hug that was more exuberant than sensual, he whispered, “Next time you want to look dignified, you might tie your blouse closed first.”

He laughed when she pushed against him with an indignant huff. “Come,” he said. “I know of a place that’ll be more comfortable for what I have in mind than this marble floor. I did a bit of exploring before we noticed the face on the statue was yours—the black color threw us off.”

“You just weren’t looking at the face,” she said, and he threw back his head and gave one of his joy-ridden crows of amusement.