She’s going to drown in that damned dress.
I throw myself into the water after her. The icy temperature is a shock to my muscles, but I keep pushing, scanning the dark lake until I spot her dress pluming around her like the petals of a twisted flower.
I kick forward past the painful cold, grabbing her around the waist and dragging her up to the surface. She takes a wild gasp as we hit the air.
“Let go of me!” she screeches. I relent, and she scrambles away, dragging herself up the pebbled beach.
“What the hell are you doing?! Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
“Just seeking a moment’s peace,” she snaps.
“Sorscha! Wait. Talk to me. Please.”
“I’m not in the mood.”
God, she sounds like me when I’m pissed.
“What were you doing? That water was freezing!”
“I am aware. That’s why I went in.”
“Because it’s cold?”
She whirls to me, sopping wet, eyes hostile. “No. Because I wanted to feel something! Anything! Not that you or anyone else would understand.”
“Sorscha, look. I don’t know how else to say this, so I’ll just come right out with it.” My shoulders sink. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re…sorry?” Her amber eyes narrow to slits.
“I know your life was perfect before I arrived. And since then, your world has been turned upside down. It’s been chaos. And it’s all because of me. Kylian coming here—bringing those creatures with him, attacking the castle. If it weren’t for me, Ilsa and Derek might still be alive. I know that. So if you hate me, I understand. I would hate me too.”
Her pale pink gown clings to her body, looking heavy as she regards me with a lightless expression.
“Hate you,” she mocks under breath. “I do not hate you. And you’re wrong, by the way. My life was not perfect. Neither was my relationship with my father.”
“Either way, he’s gone because of me.”
“He is gone because he bit off more than he could chew and because he was far too selfless for his own good,” she declares in a voice that tells me she’s had lots of practice giving commands. “He died defending hisson. And I’m sure he regrets nothing.”
And boy, I must be a glutton for punishment because I keep pushing. “Jace is more torn up about it than you can imagine.”
“I don’t want to talk about him.”
“Well, maybe I do.” I’m really asking for it at this point, but I want the air cleared. “Before you got engaged?—”
“We do not need to rehash this.” She latches onto her horse’s reins and hikes up the hill. I trudge after her, snatching up our cloaks.
“We tried to fight it. For so long. And once I knew you cared for him, it stopped. I didn’t want him to come to Vod for me, and he shouldn’t have done that, and I’m sorry?—”
I grab her arm and pull her to face me.
“I’ve already said you’ve no need to apologize. For any of it. What is it you’d like me to say?” she hisses.
“The truth! You have every reason to despise me! And I deserve it. You, of all people, should never have gotten hurt in this mess. And I am so,sosorry, Sorscha. Because I know what you’re feeling right now. I have lived it. And I know that you hide it well beneath that smile, but you don’t have to go through this loss alone. Jace says you’ve been pulling away from people, from your friends?—”
“My friends abandoned me,” she spits. “They abandoned me.Youabandoned me when I needed you all.”
There it is. The slap to the face I’ve been waiting for. The one I deserve.
