I rarely kill in a gruesome way, regardless of the life I’ve been born into.
I’m not sure I have a choice this time.
So I take the dagger, and I plunge it at Farin’s throat.
It stops a hair away from his skin.
Warm fingers dig into my wrist from where Farin grabs onto me. His blue eyes, having just shot open, aren’t wide with surprise as I might have expected. Just assessment. Curiosity.
“I wasn’t sure you’d have the guts to actually do it, Wanderer,” Farin says. He strains his jaw as I throw my entire weight into the dagger. Farin’s stronger than me, though, and with a groan, he holds me off—the two of us stuck in a stalemate.
“You shouldn’t have underestimated me,” I say.
Farin laughs, though it’s strained. “You really didn’t like me stealing your thunder today, did you?”
“Oh, come on,” I say, chest heaving. “We both know how this story ends. With my body in a ditch somewhere after I’ve shown you how to escape this world.”
Farin clamps his mouth shut, then examines me carefully. His blue eyes pierce mine, and I hate feeling seen like this. I push harder on the hilt, but Farin holds me off.
“How many times do I have to tell you, Wanderer? I don’t want you dead.”
“The deaths of others mean nothing to you. You proved as much today,” I say, though the words come out half-formed, my own guilt lancing me.
Farin frowns, cocking his head to the side, and the motion looks so nonchalant, it only inflames me.
“I don’t know when you lost the ability to feel empathy for others, Farin, but you can’t be allowed to live.”
“You don’t believe that,” he says, almost slyly.
He’s right. I don’t believe it. Not really. But I have to believe it. Because killing Farin is the only way off this island now, and I can’t… I can’t…
“You’re wrong, you know,” Farin says. “When you claim I feel nothing for others. When I realized you wouldn’t heal from the knife wound to your side…I felt something then.”
I scoff. “Am I supposed to faint over how romantic it is that you regretted I wouldn’t heal from the wound you inflicted?”
Farin’s expression is unreadable. “No, Wanderer. No, you’re not.”
Deliberately, he unwraps his fingers from my wrist, clearing the path for my dagger to sever his neck.
The dagger trembles in the air.
I grit my teeth, begging my muscles to bring it down, to end this nightmare.
They don’t obey.
“Why?” I ask, tears streaming down my face. “Why can’t I kill you?”
Farin cocks his head to the side, still lying on the ground, so it stirs up a cloud of dust. “Believe it or not, I’ve been asking myself the same question about you.”
This time, when Farin reaches up, he slips his fingers between mine and the dagger. Trembling, I let him pry it from my hand, and he tosses it to the other end of the cave. Then he props himself up on his elbow, his other hand finding its way to the curve of my neck just behind my ear. He runs his fingers through my cropped hair, the calloused tips gentle against my skull.
“I think, Wanderer,” he says, “that I might do something foolish.”
“You’re a monster,” I say, choking back tears, because I’m no longer talking to Farin.
Farin’s eyes examine my mouth. “So I’ve been told.”
“I just tried to kill you.”
“Precisely why this is going to make me a fool.”
And then he pushes himself off the ground, pulling me toward him in the same deliberate motion.
Farin brushes his lips against mine, softly at first, before deepening the kiss. It’s somehow both hungry and slow, erratic and intentional.
Tiny jolts of lightning scorch my skin, lighting the path to my toes, and I find myself running my fingers through his hair, pulling him toward me with matched desire.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” I whisper in between kisses, though my words are half-hearted.
“I’ve spent plenty of time doing things I shouldn’t be doing, Wanderer,” he says, pressing the name to my mouth. “Pretty sure this isn’t one of them.”
And it’s foolish and stupid, and I’m certain I’ll come to regret it, but I let him kiss me. Let myself melt into his arms, relax into his touch.
I let my guard down, and though I half expect him to, Farin doesn’t use it against me. There’s no dagger in his hand waiting to puncture my lungs. Just hands that intend to hold.
He’s still kissing me when the ground trembles. When in the distance, something roars, shaking the entire cavern.
He’s still holding me when the stalactite above our head is severed from the cave ceiling.
