This truth was supposed to free us. Instead, it had left me listless, untethered to anything I was before and anything I might become. And maybe it had freed me of my lies, but that freedom might have lost me Emrys.
My family and I would be safe until the Assembly determined whether I was pregnant. If I was…I’d be their prisoner for the rest of my life.
Rage warred with my grief. The Assembly could work to make everyone’s lives better with their might, but they were only working toward their own twisted ambitions—anyone who got in their way be damned.
I’d walked into Chancellor Maeron’s office a scared woman without choices. Walking out of it, I’d sworn I wouldn’t make myself an easy victim. But now, I faced the loss of my heart, my magic’s other half, mysoulmate—everything that made me whole. All because I’d been too afraid to tell him the truth about what they’d forced me to do.
And I’d done it to myself.
I should’ve known better. Born with the gift of empathy, I had no excuse for my delay, had no excuse for overlooking the poor timing of my confession. I should’ve told him a month ago—before our first kiss. Or even before that, on that fateful night in the library when he’d first voiced his suspicions.
Now the war camp rose in the distance, with dinner fires flickering against canvas and steel. Soldiers were silhouettes in the growing dark, faint voices drifting over the open field. The familiar noise should’ve comforted me, but it only amplified my torment—life went on while I rode behind the man I’d just broken.
My heart twisted at the faint tremor in his arms and the subtle way his jaw clenched. The curse fed on his anger, his volatility. Every drop of pain I’d poured into him was fuel for it.
By the time we reached the outskirts of camp, my throat burned from holding back words that he’d made clear he didn’t want to hear. We arrived to alarmed shouts that turned to cheers as soon as they recognized us.
Emrys dismounted without looking at me, issuing clipped orders to a waiting officer before striding off, bootfalls resounding on the dry earth with finality. He was throwing himself into command, into anything that didn’t have to do with me.
I’d thought I’d changed. I’d thought Emrys had taught me how to stand tall, how to be more than a frightened bird waiting in a predator’s shadow. But all I’d done was spread my wings for a moment, only to fall to the ground the instant I flew alone.
Maybe I wasn’t brave or clever…or even changed at all. Maybe I was only pretending—just as I’d pretended to be a diplomat, a woman who deserved him.
Frozen on my horse, I missed him more than I felt the camp’s emotions until I heard a familiar voice.
“Isca!”
Before I could blink, Catrin’s arms were around me. Her warmth, her joy at my return were almost unbearable after how cold I’d grown inside.
Her laughter trembled with relief as she pulled back to look at me, eyes bright with unshed tears. “You’re safe. Thank the gods, you’re safe.”
I clung to that truth. I was safe. Not alone. And yet, in the press of soldiers and campfires, I’d never felt more abandoned.
While he barked orders across the camp, I slipped into what had been our tent and moved my sleeping roll back to the one I’d shared with Catrin. I couldn’t bear being rejected by him a second time. Especially not in the space that had been just for the two of us, where our intimacy had finally taken that first leap, where he’d taught me that I could soar in his arms.
I looked around for Tegil’s osprey, hardly remembering where I’d seen it last, but came up short. It was nowhere to be found.
I’d lost it too.
It was too much.
For a few minutes, I wallowed in self-inflicted misery…until Catrin’s voice broke through the fog, calling out my name.
She was sitting at the fire with Adyn when I finally emerged from Emrys’s tent, eyes puffy, face red. Emrys stood several campfires away, yet despite the distance, he saw me, and his shoulders visibly tensed. I quickly looked away, but I felt his eyes on me.
Catrin rose, but I just shook my head and ducked into the tent. I needed to cry some more and not speak another word until the sun rose. Because right then, I felt like the darkest part of the night, lost in the starless abyss of misery.
I wished my magic could mend my weary soul, but I couldn’t affect my own emotions the way I could affect others’. All I had left was bone-deep exhaustion and the heavy weight of regret to drag me into sleep.
Catrin tried to pull me out of the darkness, to get me to talk, but I couldn’t stomach any discussion while I had to stare at the cold rampart his shoulders made in front of me.
Emrys barely spoke beyond necessity. The men brought him reports and questions; he gave answers with the sharp efficiency of a man who no longer trusted his own temper. He ate at other fires and disappeared as soon as the sun set. The first night I awoke to the tug of my magic reaching out for his and felt him lingering near my side of the tent. But when I opened my eyes, there was nothing.
A dream then. No, a nightmare. I couldn’t dare hope it was true, because hoping that he still cared for me would hurt, and Emryswasa man built to break hope.
I struggled to eat, failing more often than not. I deserved his coldness, but this was a new type of pain. That he might never look at me the same way again was hollowing me out, breath by breath.
The next morning, I was a walking ball of gloom, my mood as gray as the sky right before a winter storm. Around me, the men moved like ghosts, their gazes fixed on some distant point. I didn’t realize their low spirits were a consequence of my magic lashing out of me in waves until Catrin burst out crying on horseback.
