A Love From A Different World

Chapter 95

"Yes?" She answered back, her own voice barely a whisper.

He studied her face—the taloned hand at her throat. And released Aelin immediately.

The princess lay there, staring up at where he now knelt on the bed, rubbing his hands over his face. Her traitorous eyes indeed dared to look lower than his chest— but attention snagged on the twin tattoos on each of his knees: a towering mountain crowned by three stars. Beautiful—but brutal.

Aelin felt a sense of kinship with Rhysand. The raw fear in his eyes- it almost choked her just how much she understood. "You were having a nightmare." She willed her voice to be steady.

His hands ended in long, black talons—and his feet ... they ended in claws, too. The wings were out, slumped down behind him.

Despite her contractionary feelings towards him, and the current situation, Aelin had never found him more beautiful.

He lowered his hands, talons fading into fingers. "I'm sorry."

Sorry. Gods, what a hateful word. She, herself hated uttering the word, rarely ever did. But hearing it from the male's shaking lips- goddsdamn it, it did something to her.

"You should be," Aelin said with false bravado, trying to straighten herself out. "You woke me from my peaceful slumber."

His eyes met hers and turned hard. "Why are you here?"

And just like that, her facade crumbled. "Because you came for me."

She could see Rhysand recalling the night when he had come to wake her from her own dark dreams, and his eyes softened.

Aelin fisted her hands in my lap to keep from touching him. "How often does it happen?"

"Not often." She fixated him with a look. Rhys sighed and replied honestly. "Almost every night."

She swallowed hard. "What did you dream of tonight?"

The male opened his mouth and then closed it. He wouldn't meet her eyes. "Why do you care?"

That stopped her. Why did she care? Why hadn't she left him to his nightmares and stayed comfortably in bed? Why had she come to rescue him- him, who had been cold and hot, and then suddenly nothing towards her.

Aelin had been a master of deceit that telling the truth felt foreign as it slipped out of her. "I don't know."

He shook his head, looking toward the window—to where snow had dusted the nearby rooftops.

Feeling out of place and unwelcome, Aelin made to leave. She tried slither off the bed, but he grabbed her hand. He did not say a word, but his eyes- gods, his eyes said everything. They were wide with pain, with exhaustion, with fear. Fear that if he closed his eyes once more, he'd be transported back to the horrors that had tormented him mere moments ago. Aelin knew that fear. She went through it every single night.

Underneath all those emotions, there was one more. A plea to not be left alone with his demons. The very same plea that Aelin had resisted when it had been her violently awoken by her nightmares. But she had stopped herself from begging him to keep her company, and instead trembled with fright until dawn. Rhys too, seemed to stopped himself from asking, but his eyes betrayed him. Or perhaps that was his way of asking.

Understanding this, and how vulnerable that made him, Aelin sat back down on the bed.

Rhys still knelt, wings drooping across the white sheets, head bowed, his tattoos stark against his golden skin. A dark, fallen prince.

And she, a monster in disguise right next to him, keeping his demons away. Neither of them moved, they stayed frozen in silence, their breathing in sync.

And even when dawn finally arrived, they stayed there, hands still clasped together in unity.