“I would have killed me,” I said.
“She’s better than you,” Roman spat.
A bitter laugh escaped me. I leaned back, smiling like a fool, and ran a hand through my hair as I stared up at the stone ceiling above.
“I know,” I replied. “I’ve always known. But still. She should’ve killed me.”
Silence fell once more.
“She wanted to,” I spoke into it, keeping my gaze set firmly on the glinting chandelier above the bed I sat upon. “I could feel it. When she was choking me, when she poured the corruption into me, under my skin, inside me, she wanted it to kill me. For one brief moment it was like I could feel her again. I would do anything just to feel her again.”
I didn’t look at them. I couldn’t. Not when I was finally admitting this aloud, what I’d been too afraid to confess even to myself since pushing her into that hole and waking up in this hell.
“Having a bond like that is unlike anything you could possibly experience,” I told them. “It’s beyond words. And having it taken away…”
Someone touched my shoulder gently. Ksenia, of course.
“I wanted to die,” I said. “In that moment, I wanted her to kill me. Because if I can’t feel her like that ever again…then it should have been me in that pit.”
Tears pricked my eyes but I was determined not to let them fall. Not yet. That would wait until I was alone. All alone with only my own thoughts for company. And what dark and miserable company they were.
In that Trial, when the gods had given us a choice, the answer had been so clear. It was me or her. On instinct, I saved myself. I didn’t pause to consider the cost. I didn’t realize what I would lose. What Adrian and I’d had transcended anything I’d ever found before and, I knew in my heart, anything I would ever find again. She was my destiny and I’d ended us before we could begin. I’d severed a connection so powerful that even now, weeks later, I suffered its withdrawal.
Seeing her only made it worse. Looking at her and knowing I would never have her again, never feel her the way I had, never hear her as intimately as before, broke something in me I feared couldn’t be repaired. And I didn’t have the heart to try anyway.
“You should tell her,” Ksenia said suddenly and I lowered my gaze until I could level it upon her. “Everything you just said to us, you should tell her. She should know.”
“She hates me,” I replied, tone flat.
“Can you blame her?” Roman asked, glaring at me with his arms crossed.
Ksenia cut him a sharp glare but he didn’t relent.
“She should still know,” Ksenia argued. “Even if she still hates you, she should have the choice. The bond has been severed but that doesn’t mean you two can’t be…”
She hesitated, watching me closely as if I would indicate to her what we’d been outside of partners in the Trials. I didn’t react to her insinuation, schooling my features into careful indifference. Ksenia didn’t need to know what we’d been. She didn’t need to know how many times I’d coaxed her into my bed or answered the door to find her lips on mine. She didn’t need to know I still felt those phantom caresses against my skin, still envisioned her body beneath mine, still swore I caught a scent of her on the wind now and then. She didn’t need to know I still loved her with all the wretched sharp corners of my jagged, broken heart.
“I didn’t choose her,” I said. “So why would she choose me?”
“I imagine,” Ksenia answered with a roll of her eyes, “for the same reason she didn’t kill you.”
The smallest hint of hope fluttered to life in my chest. I banished it an instant later. She would never have me back. Not like that. Not ever again.
And I had no one to blame for it but myself.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Adrian
“I have no more words for you. The time has come for action.”
— Rebel Leader Marsh Ackley in his Final Address to the Resistance
The wall seemed to hum to life as we drew near it in the morning sun. The green woven throughout the stone was even more obvious in the light of day. I couldn't help but close my eyes and breathe in the power in the air as we passed through it, emerging to a dozen guards bedecked in brocaded burgundy on the other side.
My gaze snapped to them at once, the general tensing at my side as he assessed the threat. The one on the left, closest to me, reached toward his blade. He was barely out of puberty, far too young to wield a sword, and yet his fingers twitched over the hilt of one all the same. Frowning, I watched him from the corner of my eye as Zya and Kane stepped up closer behind me.
"General," someone called out with a tone of welcoming familiarity.
