“I didn’t realize there was some on my face,” I murmured, leaning into his touch despite the cold shock of the water.

Silar didn’t speak. He just kept caressing my skin, thorough and tender, until my face, ear, and neck were completely wiped down.

He looked as if he was going to try to dab at the red splatters on my shirt, but I shook my head wearily.

“I’ll soak it,” I told him, already shrugging out of the garment. “Though, even so, I don’t know if the stains are going to come out.”

Silar looked pained by this, his expression contracting. I gave him a wan smile. “It’s alright. I’ll just cut it up and add it to the bandage pile. We’re already going to need some new ones on your tail.” That whole catching the knife out of the air trick had re-opened Silar’s wounds. Black blood seeped through the white strips.

I couldn’t be bothered dealing with the whole laundry tub, so instead I just filled the sink and shoved my pyjama shirt into it, deciding I’d deal with it in the morning.

When Silar finally spoke, it wasn’t to answer my earlier question about if he was alright. It was to murmur, with a raw ache in his voice, “You’re shaking.”

I crossed my arms over my bare chest, shivering violently.

“I’m cold,” I said, voice cracking.

“I’ll build up the fire and-”

“No Silar. Please. Just… Just come to bed with me.” Tears filled my eyes, and I did my best to blink them away. “Tonight… Tonight was so hard. And I just really need my husband with me.”

A fresh batch of tears filled my eyes, and my face collapsed in a soundless sob. With my eyes scrunched shut, I didn’t see Silar coming. Just felt him lift me. Felt the solid support of his arms cradling me. The bone-deep comfort of his body’s warmth.

I turned my head against his chest, weeping in the quiet of our house. This bout of crying didn’t last long, though. By the time Silar laid me carefully on the bed and covered me in the blanket, I felt emptied of tears. Emptied of almost everything, really.

But not emptied of love for the man kneeling at the end of the bed and gently prying my boots from my feet. He placed my boots down, then kicked off his own. After peeling off his trousers, he slid under the blanket with me.

His body was a balm to mine. His presence an antidote to every wound I never knew I had. The violent tremble of my muscles instantly ceased when he wrapped his arms around me and brought me to him. We faced each other, front to front in the embers of the dying kitchen firelight.

“So,” Silar said, brushing a stray, damp hair away from my face. He took a moment to rub it between his fingers and his thumb, as if savouring the sensation. “Now you know.”

“Now I know?”

“About me,” he said. His jaw worked, but his eyes were back to blue and they stayed that way. “About my past.”

“About this whole murder conviction thing?” I blew a raspberry, trying to dispel some of the tension creeping back into my spine. “Yeah. That was a doozy. But you weren’t the only one keeping secrets. I never told you about why I came here. What I was running from.”

“You did not come here because you wanted to get married.”

There was no hurt in his voice, no accusation, but I reacted with a virulent need to deny it.

“That’s not… That’s not exactly true. I mean, the circumstances of my coming here certainly weren’t ideal. I had no money, no family left after Mama died. I had nowhere to go, and I was desperate and in danger, and then I saw the ad for the bride program…”

I paused, closing my eyes for a moment, because everything I was saying wasn’t making any of this sound any better. I opened my eyes once more to find Silar gazing at me steadily, not a hint of anger or betrayal on his face. And that just made me feel even worse.

“I may not have come here with the sole reason of getting married, no. But I need you to know that, from the moment I first saw you, I knew that I was lucky to be marrying you. When I saw you treat Tarion so well through the window when you thought that no one was watching, I thought to myself, ‘That is a good man.’ And I also need you to know,” I added fiercely, cupping his hard jaw with my hands, “that no matter how things started between us, my feelings for you, here and now, are real. Everything I said to you earlier tonight is true. I’m in this for the long haul, Silar. I’m in this forever,” I gulped. “If you’ll have me, that is.”

He was quiet for a heart-battering moment before he answered.

“I do not care why you came here. I do not care if you lied, cheated, or stole your way into this world. I do not care what you were running from.” His eyes grew white slowly, brightening from the aqua veins outward. “All I care about is that, if you are running, I’m the one you run to.”

He brushed his knuckles slowly across my cheek, his voice growing even quieter in the hushed bed. “Run your way down any road you wish to, Cherry. But I’ll always be the one standing there at the end of it.”

My chest grew so tight it nearly felt bruised. I pressed my forehead to Silar’s and buried my fingers in the thick warm silk of his hair. “I love you.”

“I love you,” he replied without hesitation. “I believe that I have loved you from the very first moment that I saw you through the window at the warden’s. I am sorry I did not say so before. I am sorry I did not say so many things.” He breathed out, a hot rush over my face. I revelled in the feel of it on my lips, my skin. “But I will do better,” he promised. “I will haul my heart up into my mouth for you, Cherry. Let you hear it. See it. Hold it in your hand. You’re the one who taught me I still have one.”

I nodded, my forehead rubbing against his with the motion.

“It doesn’t have to be tonight,” I said, “but one day, will you tell me what happened? When you were young…”

“You mean, about the man I killed?”

“Yeah.” I petted my fingers comfortingly against his scalp when he tensed. Slowly, like a wary animal approaching a hand outstretched with food, he relaxed.

“I will tell you now,” he said. “I do not want anything left unsaid between us tonight.”

And so, with my hands in his hair and his forehead against mine, he told me.

He told me about the man who invaded his family home back on Zabria, killing his mother when he was just a child. He told me about how he looped his tail around the man’s neck and squeezed until he died.

He told me how it wasn’t enough to save her.

“My father returned home not long after that,” Silar said. “Even as a child, I was very large and strong. It was the only way I was able to get my tail around the intruder’s neck and kill him. But even so, there was no hope of me moving the body on my own. My father discovered the scene and he immediately alerted the authorities.”

My hands paused their petting motions.

“Alerted the authorities…”

“He turned me in.”

“What?!” I half rose up onto my elbow. Surprisingly, Silar’s eyes didn’t even have a hint of white in them. Meanwhile, I was fuming. “Your own father turned you in?”

“Yes. And he testified as an Imperial witness against me at my trial.”

“I’m going to kill him,” I hissed before I realized I’d said it out loud.

Silar gave me a look that somehow managed to be both sad and amused.

“He died several cycles ago.”

“OK. Well. I didn’t actually mean literally. We don’t both need to be convicted murderers. But still! Jesus! Who does that?”

“A Zabrian,” Silar said, sounding unfazed. “My father did exactly as was expected of him. Exactly what our society and culture dictates. Had he tried to hide me, or protect me, it would have brought great shame upon him. He would have lost everything.”

“He did lose everything!” I exploded. “He lost you!”

Silar’s breath took on a charred, choked quality. His voice was thick when he spoke again.