(Landy POV)
The world had become a paradox. The more time I spent with Ross, the more the sharp, jagged edges of my grief for Rose were sanded down, replaced by a bewildering, constant hum of awareness. The boy was a ghost, and yet, he was the most solid, real thing in my life.
He’d rebuilt me. He’d taken the broken shards of the Chevalier and the poet and fused them into something new—a man who could lead a waltz or a charge with the same focused intensity. My debt to him was a living thing, a second heartbeat in my chest.
Today, the lesson was pure, unvarnished combat. No fancy footwork for ballrooms, just the dirty, efficient language of the fighting pit. We were sparring near the water’s edge, the humid air thick in our lungs. Ross was faster than he looked, his movements sharp and unpredictable. He’d learned to use his smaller size to his advantage, ducking and weaving, his attacks like the strike of a cottonmouth.
I saw an opening. As he lunged with a practice knife, I sidestepped, caught his wrist, and used his own momentum to spin him around. I drove him forward, pinning him against the broad, mossy trunk of a live oak. My body pressed against his back, one hand still locking his wrist, the other braced against the tree beside his head.
“Dead,” I grunted, my breath coming in sharp puffs against his ear.
He struggled for a moment, a futile twist of his shoulders, then went still. “Alright, you’ve made your point,” he said, his voice muffled by the tree. “Let me go.”
But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
The world narrowed to the space where our bodies met. I could feel the frantic beat of his heart through his thin tunic, or was it mine? The scent of him—sweat, swamp, and beneath it, that faint, clean hint of lavender—filled my senses. It was the same soap Rose used to steal. The memory ambushed me, vivid and painful.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
My gaze dropped to the nape of his neck, exposed where his rough-cut hair ended. The skin there was pale and smooth, dotted with a fine sheen of sweat. It was a vulnerable, strangely intimate sight. My eyes traced the line of his jaw, the surprising softness of his cheek, the way his lashes fanned against his skin as he blinked rapidly.
Something twisted deep in my gut. A pull. A yearning so profound and wrong it felt like a physical sickness.
This is Ross, I screamed at myself. The boy. Your friend. Your teacher.
But the body pressed against mine felt nothing like a boy’s. The line of his spine, the curve of his hip under my hand… it was all wrong. Or was it all right?
Time slowed, thickened like syrup. The sounds of the camp faded. All I could hear was our ragged, synchronized breathing. My head dipped, of its own volition. An inch. Then another. My lips were so close to that patch of skin on his neck that I could feel the heat radiating from it. I could almost taste the salt on his skin.
I was going to kiss him.
The realization was a thunderclap. It shattered the strange, heavy trance.
I recoiled as if burned, shoving myself away from him so violently I stumbled back two steps. My heart wasn't just pounding; it was trying to tear its way out of my chest, a trapped, panicked animal.
Ross spun around, his back to the tree, his chest heaving. His eyes were wide, not with fear of the fight, but with something else—shock, and a dawning, terrified understanding that mirrored my own.
We stared at each other, a chasm of unspoken, impossible things yawning between us.
The confusion was a tidal wave, drowning me. What was wrong with me? Was the swamp fever finally rotting my brain? Grief could make a man see ghosts, but it didn’t make him want to… to…
I looked at Ross—really looked—and for a single, heart-stopping second, I didn’t see the boy. I saw a sharp, intelligent gaze that held mine with a familiarity that spanned a lifetime. I saw a mouth that was too expressive for a boy’s. I saw the ghost of a freckle beside an eye I’d memorized years ago.
No.
It was impossible. A trick of the light. A madness born of loss.
The thought was too terrifying to entertain. If I let it in, it would unmake me.
“I…” My voice was a ragged scrap of sound. “I have to go.”
I didn’t wait for a response. I turned and fled, crashing through the undergrowth, away from the camp, away from him, away from the terrifying truth that was scratching at the door of my mind. I ran until my lungs burned and my legs gave way, collapsing against a cypress knee in the deepest, darkest part of the swamp.
I pressed my forehead against the rough, cool bark, gulping in the rancid air. I was the Chevalier. I had faced death a hundred times without flinching. But I had never been as terrified as I was in that moment, pinned not by an opponent, but by the terrifying, beautiful, impossible truth I had almost kissed.
What was happening to me?