That got my attention.
“Oh?” I replied, taking it from her.
“It went as well as I expected. He’s suffering from self-loathing and did a wonderful job taking it out on me.”
I pressed my mouth into a thin line to keep from saying something I shouldn’t. His wordshurther. I could feel that. Hell,I still remembered skimming the surface of his memories and coming upon some of the things Lilith made him do. I didn’t dig too deep, just enough to know she no longer controlled him. After witnessing two instances of him and Lucille together, I avoided the rest. It took an insurmountable amount of self-restraint not to drop him dead right then and there. I only didn’t forher. But feeling more of her pain, as if she needed any fucking more, I wanted to fly to his cell and give it back to him tenfold.
At my silence, she continued as if I wasn’t there.
“I thought we had something.”
My shadows swarmed my palms, and my heart ached, but I continued to be a silent body, letting her release her grief.
“But maybe he was right. Maybe I was a distraction from his fucked-up life. Maybe none of it meant anything. Just a passing fancy.”
A distraction? A passing fancy?
The moment I laid eyes on her, I knew she would never be something so temporary. Maybe that was why I’d been such an asshole in the beginning—Iknewshe had the potential to change my life.
She would never be just a fleeting indulgence.
I wanted to tell her how utterly she had burrowed into my hardened, fearful heart. How she became the very thing I never knewI needed. I wanted to take her chin in my hand, force her to meet my solemn gaze, and make her understand.
It took me longer than I liked, but I finally knew—I wasn’t trying to find a home on the edge of this cliff or in the silver specks of the lake. No, some part of me must’ve always known who would come into my life. Someone with eyes like Portal Lake—resilient, radiant, and untamed.
I’d sought the white and purple specks in her gray eyes. She crashed into my life, upending everything I thought I wanted and needed. Found my feather. Showed me that the only time I’d ever felt truly settled was when I was beside her. Whether she chose what I had to offer or not, she would never be temporary. She was the beginning and end for me.
But how did I tell her that?
“He was mysterious, and I did want adventure with the handsome prince who met me in my woods. But…” She bowed her head. “I thought I could be enough to change him,” she whispered, like the words weren’t meant for me but for the chilling winds of Hell to secret away.
She changed me.
“Do you love him?” I despised the question, but I needed to know. My shadows slithered around my palms like they did when I was agitated. I wasn’t above jealousy, as much as I wished I was.
“I don’t think so,” she admitted on an air of breath.
The tension in my shoulders eased, but something else bothered me, something I didn’t understand from earlier at the castle.
“If you don’t love him, then why were you willing to sacrifice yourself for him?”
“I couldn’t hurt him.”
“Couldn’t? Or didn’t want to? Even if you just stabbed him with your ice, it might’ve distracted him enough so you could escape. He would’ve healed.” I’d been in his head. I’d felt his power. He was like a Seraphim, but not wholly.
“Icouldn’t, Ronen.”
There was that phrasing again.
“You couldn’t physically hurt him?”
“No.”
My wings tightened, as did every muscle. “Why?”
There were only three instances where I knew one being couldn’t hurt another: if they were Hell Runed, which she wasn’t. If he were her cordistella. But as far as I knew, cordistellas only came in pairs. The last option made me wish Aspenwasa second cordistella to her, that the Weaver wanted her to have two, and she could choose between us. Because as much as I wanted to be with her, not one ounce of me would share her if I had her. I was too possessive. But I had a horrible feeling it was the third option.
The one I didn’t think was possible.
