Again, her words dissolved into a choked-back sound, but she could not stop the tears that coursed down her cheeks. Will brushed them away as they came, his brow furrowing as he cradled her face in his hands.
“I begged her not to,” she gasped, her eyes wide and pleading as she peered up at him. “I begged her not to, but I—”
“Aya—”
“I felt relief.”
The confession came on a broken whisper, as if her breath had tugged it from the depths of where she’d tried to bury it.Her face crumpled, her eyes slamming shut as her shoulders slumped forward, like she couldn’t bear to look at him as the words continued to spill out of her.
“When she threatened to make me forget you, I felt relief.” Her grip on his shirt tightened as she let her head fall against his chest, a full sob finally breaking free from her throat. She swallowed down the next, her jaw locking. Will’s hand slid to the back of her head, his throat burning as Aya tried to contain her cries.
“I knew what I had to do, but gods, I didn’t want to do it. Not if there was a possibility of seeing you again. So when she threatened to take you from my mind…I felt relieved. I-I w-wouldn’t have to dread dying anymore.”
A heaving, heart-wrenching sob ripped from her throat as she finally let herself succumb to her tears. It took everything in Will not to reach for his power—not to ease this pain. But Aya needed to break. It was clear in the way the tension seeped from her muscles, her weight leaning heavily into him as she cried. Will wrapped an arm around her waist.
He could carry the weight with her.
“I am so sorry,” she cried.
Gods, no. He didn’t want to hear those words. Not from her.
His eyes squeezed shut as he pressed his forehead to the crown of her head. “You havenothingto apologize for,” he assured her, not quite able to keep the tremor from his voice.
Aya shook her head, and Will…
He could not allow this. He could not be another source of guilt for her. He refused. He pushed her back slightly, his hand sliding to her cheek so he could tilt her head to meet his gaze.
“You havenothingto apologize for.”
“You would have come, and I wouldn’t have even—”
“Aya.”
Her lips trembled as she blinked up at him through hertears. Will’s thumb swiped away her tears once more, rather uselessly, but he couldn’t help himself. His eyes darted across her face, desperate to commit each bit to memory. Every freckle that dotted her nose, every scratch and scar, every clump of her wet lashes.
“I love you,” he told her. “Enough to understand the agony that comes with it for people like us.” People caught in a cruel war—in a cruel world. “And yet I would not trade it for anything.”
“Nor would I,” Aya breathed, like she needed him to believe it.
“Iknow.”
And it was, truly, as simple as that. Will knew Aya loved him, just as he knew exactly why Evie’s threat would bring her a moment of relief. Just as he knew Aya would have never let her go through with it, even if it did.
Aya’s grip loosened in his shirt, yet she pulled him closer anyway. Her teeth found her lip again, but this time, she released it herself.
“I don’t want to die.” Another confession, but this one wasn’t ripped from her on a sob. Instead, it slid from her on a whisper.
Broken.
Vulnerable.
Trusting.
“I don’t want to die, Will.”
Will felt his jaw lock as he stared down at the love of his life. He wanted to scream. There was resignation in those words, as if she already saw it as a certainty.
“Listen to me,” he demanded as he tugged her closer. “If I have my way, you are going to live far beyond this war. You are going to die old and happy in a cottage in the mountains of Tala, away from all of this.”
