Raine
The damned rain was relentless.
Raine wiped the back of his hand over his forehead, but it helped little against the heavy wetness weighing down his hair and seeping through his clothes until the leather stuck to his skin, making squeaking sounds for every step he took up the hill to the larger house they were gathering in.
Once again, he wished for a drink, probably for the thousandth time today… and it was only early afternoon. But he hadn’t taken a sip since that day in the Lakes of Mirrors.
He hadn’t been able to, not when the gods had shown him just how much Solana disapproved of it—how shefelthim slip away every time he drank himself into oblivion.
Raine focused his gaze on the sooty stones scattered across the path, making sure they didn’t trip him as her beautiful face flashed before his eyes.
He’d let her down overthe past years.
He’d known it, of course. While Solana wouldn’t say no to a drink here and there… she would never have let him continue doing what he was doing. Like Frelina, she would have confronted him—screamed at him to get it together.
More guilt crawled across his skin, the feeling almost as sticky as the leather scratching against it.
He’d promised Frelina not to pull away, but after that day… after the battle…
He’d thought he lost her, and it had damn near killed him. Raine had heard her desperate goodbye in his mind, the one where she asked him to apologize to her sister for slapping her that one time, and the one where she’d told him she was grateful for the time they’d had together, and for the experiences he’d given her.
As if he’d given her anything.
Fuck, he was such a bastard, and she didn’t even realize it because, like her sister, she was too kind. A bright light in the dark, he’d once heard Merrick think of Elessia as, and that was precisely what Frelina was. A shining fucking sun in a world where darkness reigned.
And Raine? Raine had just taken that light from her—used her to dull the pain he knew would never disappear. He’d fucked her—her first time!—after telling her he couldn’t give her anything more than that, that he couldn’t offer her love or even warmth and kindness in return.
Frelina had not just accepted it, she’d shown him she welcomed it. That she didn’t mind that he was broken beyond repair, and that she only wanted the same thing he did.
Company. Distraction. Someone to hold her during lonely nights.
For a few days, he’d been able to pretend that’s just what it was. Friends who fucked sometimes.
But during the battle? When her fear had roared in his mind, ripping through every other thought? No, he’d fucking lost it, and not because she was hisfriend. But because he didn’t want to live without the little angry Rantzier. Because despite what he tried to tell himself… his feelings for her ran deeper than he’d expected.
He hadn’t just been frightened—he’d panicked. Truly panicked when he thought she’d stopped breathing. And… fuck, he couldn’t lose another person he loved. He wasn’t strong enough for that.
Raine felt her eyes on his back right now from where she was walking beside those witch sisters, and it nearly sent him stumbling over a large boulder when he didn’t pick up a single feeling of blame or resentment from her over his avoiding her the past week. Only the kind of understanding that a Faeling who was twenty-four years old shouldn’t have.
Gods, he was four hundred years old, and he still couldn’t figure out how to talk to her. How to tell her that he wanted to be with her, but that he… just couldn’t.
Raine’s hands fisted as he glared at Merrick’s and Elessia’s clasped ones before him.
Frelina had told him she cared more for him—that she wished for more for them—during those final moments of the battle. There hadn’t been an ounce of fear or worry in her when she showed him everything in her mind, and he could fucking feel that she’d accepted it might not be something he wanted.
Another urge to drink dried his throat until he had to clear it.
The worst fucking part? It was reciprocated.
He couldn’t lie to himself anymore. He’d fucking fallen for her when she’d started stomping on his feet, stepping into his way, yelling at him when he was a bastard, and keeping him from going mad—all because she was just… kind.
But he didn’t deserve her. What male fell for someone when he’d already met his soulmate? When he’d lost her? When it was his fault a soul much more deserving than himself now didn’t exist in this realm?
A grunt slipped past his lips as he kicked a rock out of the way, and Kerym’s hand landed on his shoulder.
“You all right?” His friend’s blue eyes held that darkness that had shaded them ever since Thissian?—
Fuck. Raine’s throat closed as he thought of the friend, the brother, he’d spent centuries with—the one who was also more deserving than Raine. The one who’d carried his brother’s pain for years…
