“I want to know.” She curled her hands into fists and pressed them against her thighs. “I need to know.”
Viktor was quiet for the span of several heartbeats before he quietly admitted, “We fought.”
Her throat wanted to close around the words, but she forced them out anyway. “How bad?”
“Bad enough that Valen had to call in the Guard to separate us.”
Camille closed her eyes.Fuck.
That meant they must have come very close to killing one another. The Guard wouldn’t have stepped in otherwise. Generally speaking, elves were left to solve their own disputes.
You picked a fight, you were the one who suffered the consequences.
To know that members of the Sovereign’s Guard — at the time under Delilah’s command — had to step in to stop the fight was a horrifying testament to just how bad it must have been.
“And then you were left to face your father alone.” Camille wrapped her arms around her middle and drew her legs up to her chest. Resting her forehead against her knees, she choked out, “You were alone because of me.”
Viktor’s voice was a raw croon when he said, “I wasn’t really alone, Cam. I knew that if I really needed the Solbournes, I could always ask for help. But I was always going to have to face my dad by myself. I knew it from the moment I could walk. He was always going to be my responsibility. It’s… just the shifter way.”
The beast in her understood that. It was the same part that recognized that sometimes protecting the people you loved meant facing a horror that should never have existed in the first place. Her own father had done the same thing — and died for his trouble.
Like Theron Solbourne, Viktor was a good man willing to do the hardest thing to protect his family. Camille respected that as much as she feared it. If she made that final choice, would she just end up meeting her mother’s fate anyway? Would she choose him, only to have Viktor ripped from her because he needed to stand up for what was right at some point in the future?
Viktor had faced his demons and survived. His violent, selfish father was dead and his pack was flourishing. But there would always be more demons. There would always be more threats.
That was part of the allure of a union, she realized. There was so much safety in knowing that you would be okay if something happened to your spouse. She would be devastated if Cyrus passed away, of course, but it would not kill her.
Camille could not say the same thing about Viktor.
Her voice was slightly muffled by her knees when she admitted, “I’m scared, Vik.”
“I know, Cam.”
“I’ve made a mess of everything.” Camille shuddered. A heavy weight settled over her chest and shoulders, making it hard to breathe. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Why had she rushed into a union so fast? If she had only waited—
“We’ll figure it out,” he firmly replied. The softness had vanished from his voice and was replaced by a hard authority that made her want to straighten her spine, toplease.“You don’t have to make any choices right now, Cam, but when you do, everything will be okay.We’llbe okay.”
Camille let out a huff. He didn’t know about Epifanio, who apparently thought things were a done deal, nor about Cyrus, who might very well truly be in love with her. He didn’t know how she wrestled with the potential consequences of her choices — for herself, for the Solbournes, for the promise to her mother, for her future offspring. He didn’t know anything.
And yet she felt the muscles lining her spine begin to relax anyway. Because Viktor promised everything would be all right. Because when he spoke, something base and desperate in her listened. Because he was steady, and kind, and when he said that he would be there for her even if she didn’t choose him, a mad part of her had actually begun to believe him.
ChapterTwenty-One
What in the gods’names am I doing here?
Camille felt the thought swirl around the contours of her mind for the tenth time as she climbed up a sandy bluff. The air had cooled significantly from the heat of the day and the wind whipping off the dark water threatened to cut through her light jacket. The sun had already set, though a glow still lingered in the velvety sky, glittering on the waves that frothed over the dark sand.
Picking her way around low, coastal plants, Camille once again considered turning around and walking right back to her car. Had she really gone through all the trouble of negotiating a union only to give it all upnow?Her mother would turn in her grave — if only elves buried their dead.
Not that her mother’s approval mattered anymore.
Camille frowned as her sleek black running shoes sank into the sand. Grief was a steady tide, rising and falling with each day. Mostly she felt relief knowing that her mother was released from a miserable existence, but she was angry, too, at the injustice of that life.
She was dead. Camille understood with a predator’s frankness that death was not cruel, nor willful. Sometimes it was even a kindness, though it never quite felt that way to those left behind. Marian was finally at peace, her ashes mixed with Theron Solbourne’s and lovingly interred in the Solbourne family temple. Despite her hatred for the family, she requested her final resting place be with her consort — together again at long last.
Will I end up just like her? Am I not already on that path?
