Chapter 3: The Ambush

Arden POV

"Don't move," I whispered, dropping to my knees on the wet pavement beside him.

His eyes snapped open, gold and sharp even in the dark, and I recognized him instantly as the stranger from the platform, the one everyone in that ballroom had been trying to reach all night. His hand shot out and locked around my wrist before I could pull back, his grip iron-tight despite the blood soaking through his shirt.

"Who sent you?" he growled, blood trickling from his lip.

"Nobody sent me." I winced against his grip but didn't pull away. "I saw you fall. You're bleeding out."

His eyes searched for my face and missed it, sliding just to the left of where I actually knelt, and something about that small failure seemed to frighten him more than the wound itself. "I can't... see you clearly. The poison's blurring everything."

"Then stop trying." I pressed my jacket hard against his ribs, and he sucked in a breath through his teeth. "Lie still and let me work."

He arched off the ground with a groan, teeth clenched, eyes opening and closing on nothing, and for a moment I thought I might lose him right there against the crates. "Who are you?"

"A stranger who knows how to heal," I said, and laid my bare hands over the wound.

Heat built under my palms, low and buzzing, and then light spilled out from my fingers and lit up the brick wall beside us. Whatever had been clouding my own head Celeste's drug, the pounding behind my eyes burned away in the same instant, leaving me sharper than I'd felt all night, like the act of healing him was healing me too.

"What are you doing?" His voice had gone tight, his eyes still wide and unfocused.

"Closing the wound, keep breathing."

"I'm trying," he said, frustration cracking through the strain in his voice.

Underneath my hands, the torn muscle knit itself back together, the gash sealing until only a thin pink line remained. His breathing steadied by degrees, color flooding back into a face that had been grey seconds before, and I felt the exact moment the danger passed.

He didn't move right away. He lay there testing it, flexing the fingers of the hand still wrapped around my wrist, drawing one slow breath and then another as if checking that his own body would still do what he asked of it.

"You're not dying anymore," I said quietly. "You're whole."

"I noticed." A rough huff of something that wasn't quite a laugh escaped him, and only then did he try to sit up, bracing himself against the crates with a hand that still trembled slightly from what he'd just survived.

His other hand came up and found my cheek, tracing along my jaw like he was trying to memorize me by touch since his eyes couldn't do the job. "Your face. I still can't see it."

"Does it matter?"

"It matters." His thumb brushed my lower lip, and I felt the question in it before he asked it out loud. "Who are you, really?"

"Someone who knows what it's like to be left alone in the dark," I said, and I heard my own voice catch on it.

For a second neither of us spoke. The alley was quiet except for the drip of water somewhere off in the dark and the distant, muffled thump of music still going in a world I'd already left behind.

His hand stayed on my face, warm despite everything, and I let myself lean into it just slightly before I caught what I was doing and pulled back an inch.

"What is it?"

"Nothing." A lie, because for half a second the memory of another man's hand closing around my arm, of his breath against my ear promising the river, had risen up out of nowhere and made my whole body go rigid.

I pushed it down, hard, the way I'd been pushing things down my whole life. "Someone tried to hurt me tonight. Before I found you."

His jaw tightened, gold eyes flaring even though they still couldn't quite land on mine. "Are you hurt?"

"No. I fought him off." I said. "I'm not used to anyone asking."

"Then I'm asking." His hand didn't move from my face, but he went still, waiting, and I understood he meant it as a kind of permission that whatever happened next would happen because I let it, not because he took it.

I thought about walking away right then. Some small, smarter part of me said to get up, disappear into the dark the same way I'd come, before this stranger became something I couldn't afford to want. I didn't listen to that part either.

"Stay still," I said instead, and closed the last part of the distance myself.

He found my mouth like he'd been waiting for permission, gentle in a way that startled me more than force would have. Minutes ago a man had tried to tear this same dress off me in an alley.

But this was different; he wasn't taking anything. He was asking, even blind, even bruised, like I was something worth being careful with, and something in my chest that had been clenched tight for years finally loosened.

"Tell me what you want," he murmured against my mouth.

"You," I said, and meant it more than I'd meant anything in a long time. "I want you."

His hands found the straps of my dress and paused there, waiting, until I whispered a quiet "yes."

"I can't see you," he said again, his voice rougher now, "but I can feel you."

"Then feel me." I pressed his palm flat against my racing heart, and I felt him go still under my hand, like he was memorizing the rhythm of it.

He guided me back against the brick slowly, giving me every chance to stop him. I didn't want to stop him. The rough wall scraped my shoulders, the night air bit at my skin, and none of it mattered, because his forehead was resting against mine and his breath was as unsteady as my own.

"Tell me if you want me to stop," he whispered.

"I won't." I tangled my fingers in his hair and pulled him back to me. "Don't you dare."

And the dark folded around us, and the rest of the world went quiet.

Later, we sank down together onto the cold pavement, his head finding my shoulder, my jacket bunched beneath us like a poor excuse for a blanket. For a while neither of us said anything at all. My heart was still racing, and I could feel his doing the same against my side, the two of them slowly settling into one rhythm.

"Stay," he murmured.

"I will." I meant it in that moment, more than I'd ever meant a promise to anyone.

I traced the line where the wound had been, now nothing but smooth, unbroken skin, and let myself imagine, just for a few minutes, what it might feel like to belong to someone who chose to see you, even blind.

Near dawn, the first gray light crept over Black Hollow, and reality started creeping back in with it.

I traced his peaceful face once more, memorizing the sharp jaw, the healed cut on his ribs, a stranger's face, and yet it already felt like something I'd carry with me long after tonight ended.

Then voices cut through the quiet, sharp and urgent, closer than I expected.

"Search the block! He has to be safe!"

My blood went cold. Whoever he was, people were looking for him.

I eased out from under his arm as gently as I could, settling his head onto my folded jacket instead of the bare pavement. He stirred but didn't wake.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, though I didn't know what I was apologizing for leaving, or wanting so badly to stay.

I yanked the torn dress up over my shoulders and slipped into the mouth of the alley just as the first flashlight beam swept the far wall.