He really was a monster.
After all the time we’d spent together, all the experiences we’d shared during our travels, he felt nothing.
Blinking back hot tears, I turned my face away. I wouldn’t give one second more of my remaining few minutes of life to him.
Standing beside me on the gallows, hands bound behind her back like mine were, Sorcha alternately muttered and raved, indignant that her deal with the King was ending like this.
She’d finally encountered someone less trustworthy and more powerful than herself.
I prayed that when she died beside me, that would be the end of it and that her “sisters” wouldn’t take up the quest for revenge and go after my family.
“This is all your fault,” she spat. “If you’d kept your end of the bargain, we’d both be home in Waterdale right now, safe and sound.”
“And Stellon would be dead,” I said, “which would be a tragedy.”
Thankfully, we had never bonded. Hopefully that meant he would someday be able to heal from this pain and love again.
At least he had that chance, and he literally had eternity to get over me. I hoped he would.
“This is your fault,” I said to Sorcha. “You’re getting what you deserve… though I made the first mistake by coming to you for help.”
When I thought about it though, my goal in striking a deal with the Earthwife had been to save my family. I had done that, hadn’t I?
They were healthy and safe, far from here with a new home and plenty of money to buy whatever they might need for the rest of their lives.
My life had been changed as well.
Though it was ending prematurely, I had seen and done and felt things I’d never even dreamed would be possible for me.
Perhaps a short, extraordinary life was preferable to a long, lonely, and unfulfilled one.
If none of this had ever happened, and I’d never met Stellon—or Pharis—I would never have experienced love.
There was something I had to know before I died, and only Sorcha could tell me.
“Was there ever a love spell?” I asked.
She turned to me. “Do you really want to know?”
“Yes. I do.”
An evil grin spread across her face. “Then the answer will go to the grave with me. See you in the Land Without Stars, my dear.”
The executioner joined the men who guarded us on the hangman’s platform. He came to each of us, placing a noose around Sorcha’s neck first and then around mine without a word.
Then he dropped a black hood over my head, and the world went dark.
Nausea filled my belly, and my legs went weak, threatening to start the hanging early by collapsing beneath me. My breaths started coming too fast, in a hurry to make their final appearance before my lungs stopped working for good.
This was it, the end of the road that had begun the minute I’d met Stellon in the Rough Market, where he’d saved me, and I’d saved him right back.
Closing my eyes, I pictured his sweet, smiling face and made one last wish—that I would not be going to the Land Without Stars but to Alfheim, that magical place the Fae believed in, where life went on forever in peace and beauty and perfect love.
Perhaps someday, when eternity came to an end for him, I’d see Stellon there.
Chapter30
Way Ahead of You
