“I made a mistake last night, Lyrae.” His voice cracked on my name, and he blinked once—slow, like his eyes were burning. “A series of them, actually. I made assumptions when I shouldn’t have, and I couldn’t just leave without…without explaining why.”
He looked away, chest heaving.
“I’ve been alone most of my life,” he murmured. “The kind of alone where you learn to only look out for yourself. Where you use all your energy to erect the thickest, strongest shield around yourself for when the enemies come through the front gates to bleed you dry.”
My fingers curled tighter around the silky fabric, an awful tightness squeezing my ribs.
“When I’m by myself,” he continued, “I don’t have to think about what to say. How my words land. Whether or not I might hurt someone by what I say.” He swallowed. “But that’s exactly what I did to you, and for that, I am sorry.”
His gaze dipped to my clasped hands. “You showed me this city with such love in your heart, with such a sense of yearning, I believed you would never want to leave,” he admitted. “And I lacked the courage to ask you to come with me…and risk the pity in your eyes when you turned me down.”
The confession hit harder than any apology, and my aching heart shattered into a million pieces, scattered on the floor around us.
“Better,” Kaden went on, “I decided to ensure you kept everything you had fought so hard for. Your title, your position in court, the city you rebuilt—without forcing you to choose. Safer for me, because if I broke my own heart, I thought it might hurt less.” He lifted his eyes to mine, sorrow shining there in great, swallowing waves.
“It seems I was wrong about that, too.”
His hands opened at his sides, palms up in complete surrender. “So here I am, waiting like a beggar, so I could say this?—”
He moved, not to stand… but to kneel before me, head bowed, inky hair falling forward, and the sight punched the air from my lungs.
“No, Rooke, don’t?—”
“Come back to the Shadowlands with me. Please.” His voice came rough, stripped bare of everything except raw yearning. “Stand by my side and help me finish this. If my plan works, then maybe…stay a little longer and show me how to build a city to keep children safe, where lovers can walk hand in hand with the stars shining over their heads, and snowflakes melting on their cheeks. That is all I ask. Give me just one more day, Lyrae, and then…” His throat worked. “Then go wherever you desire.”
I stared at him, my heart doing a furious, traitorous stutter in my chest.
Behind me, a door creaked softly.
Ariel’s presence flickered at the edge of my awareness like sunlight sneaking under a door. I didn’t have to look to know she was there—wide-eyed, hungry for drama, eating this moment up like sweetbread.
Rooke didn’t glance back, his entire being fixed on me.
He swallowed, hard. “After, you can have Zephryn fly you back here. I won’t stop you from leaving.”
Something in my chest loosened, then tightened again, conflicted. “You’re letting me go.”
“I’m notlettingyou do anything,” he said fiercely—then stopped, forcing the words into something softer. “I’m… I’m giving you what I should have given you from the very beginning. A choice.”
His voice dropped. “But I would like you to stay,” he confessed. “Because I will miss you. Miss your prickly disposition. Your terrible coffee.” Those lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled. “The way you always tell me the truth, especially when I don’t want to hear it. Come and help me build something,” he whispered. “Because I don’t know how to do anything but survive the day. I don’t know how to be the kind of ruler a realm deserves. But I would very much like to learn.”
Ariel made a tiny, strangled sound from behind the door—suspiciously like a sniffle.
I looked at Rooke, hands open in front of him like an offering. I remembered the hunger in his eyes when he’d looked at this city, like he was ravenous for a life outside his island.
I reached out and touched his hand.
Rooke froze, staring at my fingers like he couldn’t trustthe sight, then pressed his forehead to my knuckles like a vow.
“There’s nothing to forgive, you know,” I said quietly. “Since we’re both so obviously shit at this sort of thing. And yes—I will come watch you undo Gravelock’s corruption, if you make me a promise, Kaden.”
“Anything,” he breathed. “Ask me for anything, and it’s yours.”
“I want you to go into my suite, take a bath, and get some sleep. I’ll go to the kitchens and find you food, and ask Zeph to hold off leaving until noon, which should still give you a few hours of daylight to do your…magicking.” His lips quirked up in a tired smile.
“Do we have an agreement, Lord Rooke?”
“We have an agreement, Commander.”
