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CHAPTER FIFTEEN change
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THREE YEARS LATER...
jacaerys.
⠀ ⠀
JACAERYS WOKE TO A HAND carding through his hair and a warm chest rising and falling under his cheek. Even before he was properly awake, he knew it was Colin. He recognised him by his hands alone, by his touch, and the way his breaths came. Three years later, and Colin's hands were different, much bigger now, but Jace knew the way Colin's pinky curved, and the blunt, square shape of his nails, and the warmth carried in the crevices of his palms. The way they made him feel—well, that was different, too.
Colin's other hand, he noticed, traced careful lines across the scar beneath Jace's ribs, where the arrow had struck him years ago, back on Bloodstone. It had long since healed, yet Colin touched it every time: with his hands, or his lips. Sometimes both.
Most of the time, it meant that he was thinking, and so Jace stirred beneath the covers, lifted his head to face the Knight in his bed, and asked quietly, groggily, in a voice that was hardly his own: "Are you okay?"
There was a blaze in Colin's eyes, fierce and brimming with determination and warmth. They were overflowing with something, always, when he looked at Jace. Time had only been good to Colin, carving his features with an edge of maturity that had only made him more handsome. Jace thought back to when they were both still wide-eyed and soft-cheeked, wondering when they had grown from boys to men.
"I don't know," Colin said, tracing a line from his scar down his navel. His voice was scraped raw with sincerity and something unknown. Something that echoed in Jace's own heart. His brow was knotted. "You were always too much for me. I never much minded."
Jace smiled softly as his heart missed a beat, as if searching for another. A part of him wanted to run, but the other, more beaten part of him that had starved for too long leaned in to kiss Colin on the lips. They were close, and the tug between them was almost palpable. If he wanted to, Jace could count every one of Colin's dark lashes, map the sun freckle on the edge of his brow to the curve of his nose.
