Then I slip the ring off my finger and with one final look, I do the same. I don’t touch the locket full of secret starlight. I allow it to remain around my neck. Just in case I need it.
We stand there in silence.
Zadyn doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to.
22
JACE
Nice.
Real fucking nice, Jace.
Once again, my talent for saying the wrong thing has proven itself undefeatable.
No, not just the wrong thing. Theworstthing a person could possibly say.
Don’t get me wrong—I’m so relieved he didn’t force her. That fear was always in the back of my mind, eating away at me. But for her to have agreed? To have consented?
This I could have never seen coming.
I know my reaction was uncalled for, but honestly? I’m heartbroken.
So I do the only thing I can possibly think of.
I get drunk.
Or as close to it as I can get off the flask in Dover’s bag.
The look on her face in that tent keeps replaying in my mind. How could I have said those things to her?
She sacrificed so much for Kai. To keep him safe, to keep Kylian from hunting us down and killing us one by one. She was brave. Selfless.
All the things I admire about her.
And yet, I called her a whore.
I finish up whatever vile liquid was in that flask and toss it on the ground, knocking my head back against the palm tree.
I keep fucking this up.
I don’t even know how or when it happened, but at some point over these last few months, I have come to belong to her in a way that I still can’t even fathom.
That pull to be near her is present even now as I glance down the beach toward the camp. She’s become my everything. My true north.
Dragging myself to my feet, I start down the stretch of sand.
There were so many moments that should have told me what was happening. I denied it and denied it until I no longer could. Until the need for her overrode everything in me—my will, my sense of duty, my entire essence.
Maybe it was the sound of her laughter that cracked my shell, or the sound of her breathing beneath me in the training ring. Maybe it was that first time we kissed, on solstice when the veil between her pride and her desire thinned just enough to have her racing into my arms. Maybe it was after she bonded Furi. When she leapt onto the ground and something shifted. The earth’s plates clicked into place.
Why did I spend so much time treating her like the enemy? Being angry? Trying to get her to hate me. Trying to hateher.
All that time was wasted. Because I was always meant to love her, and she was always meant to destroy me.
And gods, do I love her.
I turn my back on the black waves and slip inside the tent. Lavender eyes stop me dead in my tracks.
