3
Bronywyn
Eyes fluttering open, I’m immediately assaulted with bright light that sends my headache up about fourteen notches.What the hell happened last night?I sit up, forcing myself off of the soft mattress at my back.
“Hey, where are you going?”
The deep baritone is so out of place in my world that I lurch forward to get away from it. Soft carpet meets face in my mad dash to safety, and I groan, rolling over and instantly deciding that death would be preferable to the now throbbing migraine.
Sheets rustle as someone moves above me, but I don’t open my eyes—not yet. “Bronny, what is it?”
Bronny? No one has called me that since…I open my eyes as the man sits up, his light brown hair bathed in sunlight. The massive sun tattoo on his chest is painfully familiar, and my heart aches with what—or rather who—I’m seeing, even as my brain insists it can’t be real. “Mal?”
Grin spreading, he arches an eyebrow. “Forget me already?” Broad chest on full display, a jaw that could cut glass…he is exactly as I remember him. His gaze softens as he stares down at me. “You forget how to get out of bed, too?”
“How is this—I don’t—you’re dead.” I choke the words out, and his smile vanishes.
“Are you okay? You’re so pale.” He scoots toward the edge of the bed, the sheet barely covering what I imagine is a hell of a lot of naked skin. “I’m not dead, Bronny. I’m right here.”
He reaches for me, so I sit up and scramble away until my back hits a solid surface.This isn’t right. He’s dead. I watched him die.The memory of Lucy beheading him assaults me, and my chest constricts as I try hard not to panic. “I—I don’t understand how you’re here.”
“You said I could stay? I can leave.” He reaches for the slacks beside the bed, face falling in embarrassment.
“No. No. Please don’t go.” Forcing a smile, I push to shaking legs and somehow manage to make it all of the way to the edge of the bed without face planting again. “I was just surprised, that’s all.”
His expression relaxes, and I sit down beside him. “So, last night,” he starts with a chuckle.
I glance down at myself, not at all surprised to see that I’m wearing nothing but a thin nightshirt. Mainly because the longer I’m here, sitting beside him, the quicker this particular moment in my history returns.
This was our first night together.
But why am I reliving it?
“Last night was special,” I tell him. Even if this is some sort of twisted dream, seeing anything but joy on Mal’s face pains me. He was such a kind soul, a person who was far too good to have been wrapped up with me.
“It really was.” His hand begins to rub small circles on my back. It moves in such an effortless way that fresh tears spring to my eyes. Pressing a palm against my chest, I try like hell to alleviate the pain in knowing how his life ends.
Mal has been dead for a long-damned time. He died kneeling before me, a smile on his face, even as he knew what was coming. He’d sacrificed himself to save me, and it’s a moment I’ve never forgiven myself for. He had loved me and paid for that love with his life.
“Want to talk about it?”
I glance over at him. “Talk about what? Last night?”
“We can absolutely talk about that.” He winks. “But I was referring to your dream. It must have been a bad one to send you stumbling out of bed.”
“I did have a nightmare,” I say as the memories of what reality holds for me run through my mind.
“That I was dead?”
“Yes.” Swallowing hard, I stare down at my hands. “And that I took in some dark magic to save someone I cared for.”
He whistles. “Dark magic. Shit, Bronny, that does sound like it was rough.”
Glancing over at him again, I take in the planes of his clean-shaven, masculine face. “I tell you that you were dead, and you focus on the dark magic?”
He shrugs. “The dark magic is a much bigger issue than my fictional demise. Even though we both know you’d never do something like that. Dark magic is not something you would toy with.”
Do we?“I would if it meant saving someone.”