“Maybe he didn’t,” she says. “Maybe I’m just crazy.”
“No.” My voice hardens. “You’re not.”
She takes a step back from the window, I take one toward her instinctively—and she recoils again.Veyr’naelin ves kaemorin... ael’tharûn ves thalûn.(The bond calls you mine... but I must taste it alone.)
This is exactly what he wants.
“You’re not crazy,Saelûn.” My voice drops. “If you heard him... then something did get in. Even if it was only his voice.”
Kaemorin ves’thrae. Velorin narh veskae(Mine to protect. Safe. Just not with me.)
I take a few steps backward, so I don’t crowd her.
“You’re not alone in this. He’s not going to take anything else from you. Ever again.”
I replay the minutes I spent downstairs, and the images of her alone, unprotected, make something vicious coil in my gut. The bond surges again, snarling under my skin.
“I swear to the gods,” I growl, “if he reaches for you again?—”
I trail off. Because what I’d do to him doesn‘t belong in her ears.
I am not a beast who enjoys the kill, not until now.Vel’skarûn narh kai’thrae. (The bastard will know my wrath.)
Wiping scum from this planet has always been a necessity, never a pleasure. But for this man... for the way he’s made her life a living hell... He’s going to pray for death to whichever god will listen.
Anonymous-
You’d think that since she’s hismate,he’d believe her when she told him she heard someone.
She wasn’t lying. She heard me. Even through the sacred wood of his cabin. Through all his wards and runes and whatever gods he begs for protection, my voice still got through.
But I wish it hadn't frightened her like that.
Her hand on the glass?—
I replay that over and over. She wasn’t reaching for a hallucination.She was reaching for me.
But I ruined it, just like with Anna’s scarf. Every time I try to give her back a piece of what she’s lost... she loses more.
She looked so hopeless. I never wanted that.
If Andrik knew her—really knew her—he’d see the difference.
He’d hear the wobble in her voice.
He’d know the tears weren’t meant for me, but for the confusion tearing her apart.
He’d recognize the way she steadied herself on the pane: not fear... desperation.
She wasn’t slipping away from reality. She was pulled toward something she didn’t yet understand.
And he didn’t believe her. That’s the part that twists in my chest.
She’ll see it eventually. The difference between someone drawn to her because nature demanded it... and someone drawn to her because they chose her, over and over and over again.
I lower myself onto my sleeping bag beneath the trees closest to her window. The cold seeps through my coat, into my bones, but I’ll take frozen ground and her being near, over a warm bed without her.
Maybe this is one of dad’s lessons that’s finally came in handy. My brother and I used to huddle in the backyard when he’d lock us out in the dead of winter. I wonder if that's why I don't feel the cold anymore.
