My philosophy is to keep you alive, even if it means you’ll never be mine.The thought rises unbidden, dangerous in its honesty, terrifying in its completeness.My philosophy is that I would burn every bridge, sever every tie, become the monster they already think I am, if it meant you drew one more breath.
“My philosophy is to survive,” I say instead, burying the truth beneath pragmatism. “And to complete my mission.”
“Your mission.” She tests the word like it’s a foreign concept, like it tastes bitter on her tongue. “Is that all I am to you?”
The question hits like a physical blow, stealing the breath from my lungs. I could lie, Ishouldlie, but something in her gaze strips away my defenses, makes pretense impossible.
“No,” I admit, the word rough in my throat, dragged from some place I’ve kept carefully hidden. “But it’s all you can be.”
She steps closer, close enough that I can smell the rain-and-honey scent of her skin, close enough that I could count each silver fleck in her strange, beautiful eyes. “Because of Sam?”
“Because of everything.” I back away, putting distance between us, retreating to safer ground. “Because you’re half-fae royalty and I’m a soldier. Because you have a mate, and a powerful Tether, and I have my duty. Because my father would slit your throat himself if he thought I—” I stop, cursing myselffor saying too much, for revealing vulnerabilities that could be exploited.
“If he thought you what?” she presses, following me, refusing to let me escape. “Cared for me?”
I laugh, the sound bitter and sharp as broken glass. “If he thought I was compromised. If he thought I saw you as anything more than a political piece to be moved across the board.” If he knew how completely she has unmade me, how thoroughly she has rewritten everything I thought I knew about myself.
“And do you? See me as more?” Her voice is soft, almost a whisper, but it cuts through my defenses like a knife through butter.
Gods help me, I can’t lie to her face. Not when she looks at me like that, as if she can see straight through the armor I’ve spent centuries building, straight to the heart I’ve pretended doesn’t exist.
“It doesn’t matter what I see,” I say finally, the words heavy with resignation. “It doesn’t change anything.”
She’s silent for a long moment, her eyes reflecting the moonlight like twin pools of silver, fathomless and knowing. Then she reaches out, her fingertips brushing against my forearm, a touch so light I could almost believe I imagined it, yet it burns through leather and skin to brand me to the bone.
“Everything changes, Locke. Whether we want it to or not.”
Before I can respond, she turns and walks away, disappearing back into the ruins where Sam waits. I watch her go, feeling as if something vital has been torn from my chest, as if she’s taken part of me with her. Perhaps she has, the part that still believed I could remain untouched, unaffected by her presence in my life.
I remain at my post, alone with the ghosts of what cannot be, as Kasamere Forest whispers its ancient secrets around me, as if mocking my foolish heart for wanting what can never be mine.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ESME
Rue’s song is absolutely filthy. Not going to lie, I love it.
I don’t catch the full lyrics at first, just the chorus, which he belts out like he’s performing on some grand stage rather than sitting astride his horse, somewhere deep in the shadowed depths of the Kasamere Forest. The ancient trees seem to lean in closer as his voice echoes off their gnarled trunks, and I find myself leaning forward in my saddle, straining to catch every scandalous word. When I begin to listen closer, my ears pick up the deliciously inappropriate verses that follow.
Oh, I once loved a stableboy, bold as a buck,
With hands on my hips and incredible luck,
He danced in my sheets with a bottle of gin,
Then cried for his mother when I did him in.
My head snaps up in surprise as he bellows the next verse into the canopy above, his horse ambling casually between mine and Locke’s like a traveling bard who knows damn well he’s causing trouble. There’s something almost theatrical about the way he throws himself into the performance, one hand gesturing wildly while the other maintains perfect control of his reins.
He continues singing, his voice rich and resonant as it carries through the misty air,
‘Please, my dear Rue, don’t tell the queen!’
I said, ‘Sweetheart, I’ve bedded the whole bloody scene.
From the kitchens to guardsmen, the priest and the cook,
And the lad who once tried to rewrite my book’.
