“If I’m honest…” I start slowly. “I wish I could say that Ididn’tlove him. That I never really loved him, because I wish it were true. It’d feel like my heart betrayed me less. Like I could pretend I wasn’t so fooled by who I thought he was.” I grab my chest. “But…if I look back honestly on the woman I was, as much as it physically pains me to admit, I did love him—the man I thought he was. In the way I knew how for the person I was.
“But I grew. I learned truths about him that couldn’t be reconciled. People change over time and the love needs to change with it.” I smile softly, thinking of my parents. Of the married members of my crew and their spouses on land, or aboard that seemed to survive anything thrown their way. “Charles forever wanted the naive and perpetually optimistic young woman who made him her entire world. Someone who would never challenge him, who existed to make him feel good. She faded, with time, and the woman who replaced her needed so much more—needed a man he couldn’t be. I wanted a partner; he wanted a servant.
“And every night, for years, I would wonder what I could’ve done better…how I could’ve fixed it. WhereIwent wrong.” I shake my head. Looking back on it all, the sum of Charles’s and my time together, there were times when he wasn’t as horrible as I thought. And others when he was worse than I allowed myself to see. I wasn’t as good as I remember. But I was also far too patient and forgiving. The burden is not solely mine to bear. “In some ways, we both succeeded. In other ways we both failed.”
“Him vastly more than you, it sounds like. He had as many choices and opportunities as you did and it sounds as if he squandered them. He never had any idea of the treasure he had—” Ilryth stops himself before the rage can take over his words. I nearly tell him to go on; I’d love to hear him verbally eviscerate Charles on my behalf. But I refrain. It wouldn’t be productive.
“Obviously, I got away. With the help of you and your magic…but what you couldn’t do—what youfailedto do—was truly free me.” I’m drawing closer to him. Pulled by pain and questions I’ve harbored for years. Questions I don’t know if Iwantthe answers to but must ask anyway if I can ever truly bare my heart to the man who has claimed it from the protective prison I’d locked it within. “The markings you gave me—your song—said none would threaten or control me. Yet I spent the five years of borrowed time that you gave me running from him. Trying to escape his hold. Trying to expunge the marks he put on my soul. To think of anything but him.
“Why?Your magic could’ve ended everything for me…it could’ve given me a true fresh start. I could’ve made the most of my time rather than feeling Charles’s grasp still around my throat. Why didn’t you?”
Ilryth stares deep into my eyes. I’ve exposed more of myself to him in these moments than I ever intended. He sees a part of me that I wish, desperately, I could just let go of, or kill off. But it almost feels as if this wound will continue bleeding until everything that I’ve let fester has been cut out.
“I never wanted to see you tortured. I wouldneverwish for that, or allow it to happen, if I could stop it.” Ilryth’s words are filled with all the pain in the world. I believe him without hesitation. This is the man who went to the edge of existence for me, after all.
“Then why—”
“When we forged our deal, I structured it that ‘No plant nor man, bird nor beast, shall hold you back whenyoudesire release.’” The words are said delicately. And for good reason. I hear his implication.
“You’re saying that it is because I did not desire my release enough that Charles continued to have the power over me that he did?” I snarl, my mouth twisting with pain. “I would never—”
“I couldn’t have known what bonds you did or did not want to keep. I wouldn’t sever something you wanted to hold on to,” he interjects firmly, continuing his explanation. “Oaths, bargains, our word means as much in the Eversea as it does in Tenvrath, you know that. I extend the same respect to you—to all humans—on instinct. If you hadchosento establish a bond, you would have to also choose to end it and take action to do so. What if I had broken a much-loved connection crafted by hardship and toil by wielding power indiscriminately?”
It makes so much sense. A wash of guilt rushes over me with sickening cold that I had ever suspected so little of him. “Then why didn’t the magic break it the moment I wanted it broken?”
“The blessing I gave you wasn’t designed that way. It didn’t work retroactively,” he explains.And I didn’t wish to nullify my marriage that night.I just wanted to escape. “Moreover, even if I’d known, I couldn’t. That oath was cemented and involved ties to others that I wouldn’t have had the power to reach in that moment with my song. I was focusing ahead for you, not behind.” He tries to catch my eyes. I look away. So he catches my hands instead. That brings my attention back. “But I am sorry, Victoria. I never meant to let you down.”
My fingertips quiver under his calloused, warm grasp. My whole body begins to shudder and I swallow. I try to push all these overwhelming emotions down somewhere deep, deep inside of me where it can’t be reached ever again.
“I resented you for years for not freeing me from him,” I confess.
“Some things we must do ourselves. No amount of wishing or magic can free us or spare us the responsibility.”
“It’s unfortunate, isn’t it?” I chuckle grimly.
“It is,” he agrees with the ease of someone who’s wished the opposite were true many times. “But we carry on. We have no other choice.”
I nod in agreement. He gives me a small, almost gentle smile, one I return in kind. I can see his flaws as easily as his pain. The grim realities he’s forced himself to accept and push through. I see something familiar in the mess of it all:
Myself.
“So, now you know everything.”
“I don’t think I knoweverything.” He smiles slightly, which softens the blow the words would otherwise be. “But, with any luck, I’ll be blessed to learn in time. I could spend ages learning you and it would never be enough. You are worth every risk, and every chance.”
He moves forward, wrapping his arms around me. Ilryth holds me without pretense. It’s not needy, or passion filled.Sturdy, I’m reminded yet again. He is the immovable rock in the ocean. He’s the safe haven where I can drop my anchor and rest.
“I thought…forgetting him might help me love you better, would make me more worthy of you. But I’m glad I remembered. I’m glad I could tell you all of it—all of me. If you are to want me, then I want you to want it all, the good and the bad.” I want to be his—every tired, determined, bruised, and bold part of me. If he is to have me, then I want him to have it all. I want to know hewantsit all.
“Good. You should never lessen yourself to spite another. The best revenge is to thrive.”
My arms slip around his waist, reaching up his back, clinging to the hardened muscle of his shoulders. Ilryth presses his lips to mine, forceful, but not needy, erasing the last remnants of Charles from my body and thoughts. His fingers tense and relax, kneading up and down my back, unraveling the knots of so many years of pain.
When he pulls away I realize that the vast sea I felt when we first entered the room has condensed. Now there is only us. We steep in the moment and chart every detail of each other’s eyes, like constellations that will guide us home.
Never have I done so little, been so covered, and yet felt so exposed.
This is an intimacy unlike any I’ve ever known and I want to give myself wholly to it. I crave it more with every passing second. It’s like taking off my corset after a long day of work. Like a sip of iced lemon tea on a scorching summer’s day—sharp to the tongue, sweet on the throat, refreshing to the core. It’s the first breath I took after cresting the waves on the beach that night, long, long ago.
