“Of course they did,” I heard myself say, but my voice was warped and rimed with frost.
Of course that was the reasonshehad been sent. My obsession with her had started the first time I laid eyes on her. And the Assembly had been watching all along, trying to get something out of their favorite weapon since they no longer controlled me.
Hadn’t they told me that they wanted exactly this the same day I’d met Isca for the first time? After countless sleepless nights spent agonizing over the possibility, rotting me from the inside out, her admission still split me open.
“I…didn’t have a choice in coming,” she continued, voice trembling. “The chancellor made it clear I had to complete one of the two objectives. And at first, I did consider going through with the second. Especially when diplomacy was…failing those first weeks.”
Because I’d been running away from her, from everything. I’d been a coward.
Now I’d given her pieces of myself no one else had ever dared touch. I’d grown so desperate for everything she would offer me that I’d stopped thinking of the Assembly’s interest in sendingheraltogether.
My teeth ached from how hard I clenched them. My chest was so tight my heart might crack within it. I turned my head, forcing my expression back to stone, throwing up my mental walls with the movement. She couldn’t know what her words were doing to me.
“I thought it would save my family,” she whispered. “But, Emrys, I abandoned all thoughts of bringing a child for them to control back to Caervorn a long time ago. Because I—” Her voice broke, and she looked at me with such sincerity, her next words almost made me break. “Because I fell in love instead.”
I choked on the shards of ice filling my lungs. She fell in loveinstead. Which meant the mission was real, but her heart had strayed. So she cared, but she still might have used me.
My voice was steady, but I was falling apart inside. “Then why did you never ask me for help?”
“You weren’t exactlyapproachable, Emrys.”
I laughed so loud it nearly tore my throat. Frost spread in widening cracks beneath my stallion’s hooves, and her mare danced violently away, as if even the animal understood I wasn’t safe. I wanted her to look away—to look anywhere but at me with that wounded gaze.
I dismissed the simple truth trying to emerge in my mind: she still cared for me. Because hope was more painful than betrayal. Better to break myself by pushing her away than risk opening my heart again.
“Say it plainly, Isca,” I said, voice gone hoarse from the despair tearing at my lungs. “You let me love you so you could breed a weapon for them. And I’ve gone and done exactly what they wanted.”
So stupid. I was so incredibly blind.
Her breath hitched. “I chose you. I stopped telling them anything months ago. And all I’ve gotten from the chancellor since have been thinly veiled threats.”
I latched onto the one thing that didn’t slice cleanly into my heart.
“So,” I said, letting the cold swallow my voice, “that’s why he sent a spy.”
Her tear-filled gaze whipped up to mine, fear now coloring it. “What?”
I couldn’t talk about the Assembly, not while I was being ripped in half from the inside. So I said, “He didn’t get the chance to tell me why he was spying on you before he died.”
Let her think I was nothing more than the beast again.
I wanted to rage. Unleash the magic inside me until the ground beneath my feet crumbled away in a landslide of my grief. Bury the Assembly in the rubble left behind, then tear the sky down so they could never touch her again.
But the curse wanted that. The magic wanted unending chaos if it couldn’t have her. If I gave in—if I as much as let my guard down against it for one second—she’d be gone forever.
So I swallowed my rage and let the chill spread through me.
Her words had reached inside my chest and torn my heart out, taking nearly every trace of life along with it. Now her delicate hands held it, pulsing in her grasp, leaving only the curse behind, beating behind my ribs where she should be.
And love still held me captive. It was the one cage I didn’t want to escape. Even in what felt like betrayal, my heart, my magic, my very soul refused to stop reaching for her.
“I told myself I could live with this possibility,” I admitted, swallowing hard so I could keep breathing. “Right up until the moment you made it true.”
With her head hanging low, she whispered, “I’m sorry, Emrys,” her voice barely audible. Her fingers clutched the reins so tightly her knuckles were white.
I almost wished I’d never heard her apology.
“Do you know what it feels like,” I rasped, “to go to bed every night with your thoughts completely consumed by another person, and then wake up wondering if everything between you the day before was lies?”
