"This is bad," I said. Elias sat down on the couch beside me, quiet and unresponsive. "Why are you not panicking?"

"I knew it would come to this. I've been preparing for it for a long time. We have to work fast. After they take me for questioning, I could be imprisoned. I should take you home first. We don't have as long as I thought."

"So in the next day we're supposed to defeat your guild?"

He settled his hand in his hands. "I don't want you to get stuck here. I need to take you home. If we can get Jax to join hands with us, then he'll help me break out. I have faith in him. Then, I can return to your world to get you and your allies."

"I should spend this time learning how to travel worlds."

Elias tilted his head to see me, still resting it against his palms. "It's very dangerous. I practiced for months before I actually did it. It's a technical process for me, not something I sense. I'm not sure how to teach you."

"Instead of spending more time living through Ashton's life, we should assemble warriors to help you. It's time to come clean."

"No." Elias patted the back of the couch. "Take a few hours to learn more about Jax and then go to him. Him only."

"Why only him?"

"I can't trust anyone else from his guild. Ash trusted him and he told me the truth about my parents. I mean, he didn't know for sure it was true. He only could tell me that he knew his guild didn't do it and that he suspected Lote. I know that if you ask him to help, he will. I'm not a fighter, Max. I can't help kill Lote in the way that Jax can."

I leaned back against the couch. "I could kill him before I leave."

"That would help. He's hard to take down."

"Listen, I'll travel through time again to prepare so I can talk to Jax and tell you information about what he planned. I'm not promising anything else though. We'll decide this evening."

Elias closed his eyes. "Thank you, Max. You could have killed me for dragging you into this. I don't know what I'd do if you weren't here."

I let out a very long sigh.

----------------------------------------

The night Jax and I escaped the assault on our camp had damaged the shield I'd erected between the two of us and I wasn't sure how to protect myself. We had survived the night and painstakingly traveled to the closest city, where we received healing treatments. I'd felt on the brink of death. Maybe I had been.

Since then, every day, every moment, had assaulted that shield the same way the warriors had attacked the defensive fog. We spent too much time together, faced too much danger at each other's sides. It wasn't only the times we'd protected each other or saved each other that threatened to wear down my heart. It was also moments like tonight, when the moonlight glowed against his smooth skin, and his amber eyes found me in the dim light.

"Can't sleep again?" he asked.

"No."

He rolled onto his side. I'd become so used to sleeping near everyone in our group that I shouldn't have thought about it anymore. I didn't think a thing about it when other warriors placed their sleeping mat beside mine. We'd slept like this for more than four months.

Every single time Jax did it, my stomach fluttered the entire night. I didn't want to admit the truth to myself, so I didn't. It whispered to me, though, in the heat in my cheeks and the drift of my gaze.

"Try going for a walk again," he said. "That worked last time."

"Why aren't you asleep?"

"I had a feeling you'd be up again. I noticed that when you're quiet at dinner, you end up with insomnia."

He'd learned that about me? I'd tried to hide when I felt anxious and I thought I'd done well with it, but I supposed I was more withdrawn than I realized.

In the past, I would have lashed out at him for seeing me and knowing me, for the intimacy of the time we'd spent together softening my heart to him. It felt pointless today.

"Maybe I'll try that."

Jax pushed himself up and offered his hand to me. "I'll go with you."

"I'm okay. You should sleep."

He clasped my hand anyway and tugged me up. "I could use a walk too. You mind?"

My hand was still in his, my body warm from his nearness. I shook my head, afraid that if I said anything, I'd give myself away.

Only it didn't take long for me to do just that. That night as we walked with fatigue softening my resolve, we talked for hours without realizing how much time had passed. After that, no matter how hard I tried, I craved more of him, desperate to know him. The weeks passed and soon there was nothing left guarding my heart from his. I'd seen his heart in battle and I'd become charmed by his surprising vision to bring peace to the guilds.

One day as we walked through the woods on our own again, Jax started talking of this future he wished to see. "We fight well together, and I don't just mean us. Our guilds do. We're incredible alone, but look at what happens when we unite. But as for us specifically, it doesn't matter where we come from or who we fight for. When we let ourselves forget, we're unstoppable. In-sync."

"What are you trying to say?" Discomfort filled me because I didn't want to give myself the hope that we could ever be more than enemies.

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"If we can make peace, so can our guilds. And they should. Look at what could come of it. We could do so much more if we worked together and combined resources." It was something he'd said often with a dreamy quality to his voice. He dared to not lose hold of this vision. "It's hard to overcome bad blood and I think that's the main reason that we've been held back from making progress. Our guilds can work together, though. We're doing it right now."

He never talked like this around the others, so it felt like a secret only the two of us shared. Actually, I couldn't believe I was entertaining the idea because the blood truly was bad.

"I'm not sure people can move past everything that's happened," I said.

"Maybe the next generation can unite if we pave the way."

"It's just that this hasn't been a bloodless war."

Jax hesitated. "Something happened to you personally."

"Not to me. To Elias. His parents were killed."

He nodded and sat back, speaking carefully. "You think my guild killed his parents."

"It's pretty well known."

Jax took my hand, stilling my breathing. "I swear on my life that we didn't kill his parents."

"Then who did?"

"I just know it wasn't us. I've heard our leaders talk."

I didn't want to talk about this. I pulled my hand away, reminded again that we were not truly allies. Our time together had been making me forget that we'd entered this war as enemies and we'd return to enemies when it was over.

"Ash," he said.

"We shouldn't talk about this. We shouldn't talk about anything. This is why it was a mistake to act like we could be friends."

I started to walk away, but he caught my arms and turned me back toward him, settling me back against a nearby tree. "We've been through too much for you to storm off like that. You know me. You know I wouldn't support having people murdered. We're all in the same kingdom."

Jax stood so close to me. The heat of his body burned against me like an inferno. Irrational anger stormed through my heart, competing with that fire I felt. "You've been getting in my head."

"You're not this childish. Why do you insist on pushing me away?"

"Because there's no world in which we can be friends, Jax. It's never going to happen. It doesn't matter who you are and who I am. It matters who we serve. Our people are enemies."

"Our people are this kingdom."

"You know that's not how it actually works."

I breathed so hard that my body brushed his. He quieted, glancing down my face.

"I'm not going to play the game where we pretend to hate each other." The touch on my arms turned tender as his palms smoothed up to my shoulders. "I don't hate you and I know you don't hate me."

I couldn't breathe. Not with him so close.

"I don't know if we can stitch our kingdom back together, Ash. But can't we at least overcome the wounds between our guilds? Why can't the two of us follow our hearts and find the narrow path that we can walk together."

"There is no path."

"So what if we forget just this once?"

Forget and give in to what I'd been fighting. I didn't need him to say it when I could read the want written all over his face, etched into his body.

"You want to live forever wondering?" he asked.

My eyes closed as the wondering took hold of me. Wondering how his hands would feel on my body. Wondering how his lips would taste. Wondering how we could make each other feel. "Wondering is better than knowing. Once we know, we'll remember, and it'll be worse."

Jax pulled away from me and I felt so cold without his warmth. "Do you think if we were from the same guild things could be different?"

I swallowed hard, afraid to let myself think about it. How could someone hold such sway over me?

"I think if the war between our guilds can hardly keep us apart then surely in any other kind of life, there would be nothing to hold us back."

"Then it seems so sad to give up without any kind of fight."

The earthy scent of his flesh tangled my senses, stilling me so that his nearness had the chance to work through me.

I had never understood people making bad decisions in love before. I'd never understood not being able to deny an impulse or to walk away from a bad situation. In mere moments, Jax had undone a lifetime of what I believed to be my own restraint and showed me convincingly that I was not as strong as I thought I was.

"Tell me to walk away…" His breath tickled my ear when he leaned in. "And I will."

I tried to make the words leave my lips but the temptation of stealing a few more seconds of this incredible sensation somehow turned into more time than I intended to give us. And I was staring into his eyes, no longer breathing, unable to move, to think. I could feel something dragging my body to him. His lips looked soft and beautiful. Looked like they needed me to kiss them.

I'd never experienced a physical draw so hard to escape.

"I…" My voice failed me as his eyes carefully, as carefully as he wielded his swords in battle, raked down my face to my mouth.

"It's okay," he said.

"Is it?"

Embarrassment flooded me. I couldn't deny any of this. He'd told me he'd walk away and I hadn't said anything or left. We both knew without a doubt that we wanted each other and I would never escape this moment, no matter how hard I tried. I would always remember it.

Wanted desperately not to forget.

Oh, damn it. I'd gone weak. I'd gotten myself into a mess. This wasn't going to work out. What was I doing? In a few months, we'd return to our guilds, and we would not see each other again until we were on opposite ends of a battle.

A pained looked filled his eye and then he sighed as he eased back, giving me the space I silently demanded. Only I didn't demand it. I hated it. The loss ripped through me as more and more space opened between us.

I caught the back of his neck with a desperate grip and lifted myself up to him, unsteady on my toes. He caught me around my waist.

"It's not okay," I said. And despite my words, I brushed my lips against his, afraid to get any closer.

His body pressed mine against the tree now so he consumed my entire world. He was all I felt and saw. All I could think about. Jax opened my mouth with his and raked his hands down my body without the slightest hint of shyness. Desperate, ravenous energy possessed him as he kissed me deeply.

I knew that wouldn't be the end of the it. The next day he'd sidled up beside me. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asked.

"No. Never. We should never admit that it happened."

He snorted and it made me want to punch him.

"Are you really laughing right now?"

"It's a little ridiculous," Jax said. "It did happen. You want to be in denial about it but that's not going to solve anything."

"It's already solved. We're not doing it again and we're forgetting it happened."

"You can't forget." Jax worked closer to me, bringing me dangerously close to the sweet heat of his. The way his body eclipsed mine made me crave more. What had gotten into me? "It's going to happen again. Already is."

Cocky asshole. I pushed him back a step and ripped my hand away before I could linger or make the mistake of discovering more of him to not be able to forget.