“What’s wrong?” Sin asked.
“Nothing,” I whispered. “And everything.”
He came up beside me and captured my chin so I was forced to look at him. The worry in his eyes cracked something in my heart, seeing this imposing warrior brought down by his love for someone like me.
“Talk to me, Rain.”
“That’s just it,” I choked out as the weight of reality came flooding into me. “I don’t know what to say to you, Sin. Everything over the past week has been so much. Too much. Seven days ago I was an emotionally stunted cashier at a Taco Hut in New Jersey with little to no chance to ever be anything more than that. Now I’m a princess in a different realm with a manipulative long lost father, and I’m supposed to fix this broken world because I also happen to be the prophesied savior. Oh, and I have fucking magic!” I shot a spark of flame up into the night to accentuate my frustration.
I probably sounded hysterical by this point, but it needed to come out. Everything I’d tried to dismiss needed to finally come out.
“And then there’s you, Sin. Do you even understand what you mean to me? I gave up on love a long time ago. Wrote it off as yet another thing that was not in the cards for me. And I was fine with that. It was safer and easier, and I had accepted it. Then you come along and pulverize every fucking brick of the wall I built around my heart. It hurts, Sin. It hurts to be away from you, but it hurts even more to be with you because I know it won’t last. I don’t know how to go back to my life before you. And the worst part of all? I don’t know how to be that person for you. I don’t know how to love you the way you love me. The way you deserve. I’m broken, Sin. I’m just… broken.”
I couldn’t stop the tears flooding down my cheeks, and for the first time I didn’t even try to. Only around him could I let myself be weak and vulnerable without fearing judgment.
Sin pulled me away from the wall and tucked a stray hair behind my ear. He looked at me,looked into me, and said, “You are not broken, Rain. You never were. Not to me. I have been a ghost for over forty years, drifting through life without living. You brought me back. I don’t need a prophecy to tell me thatyou’re the savior. You’ve been my savior since the first moment I saw you. You say that you can’t love me the way I deserve? The truth is that I don’t deserve even a piece of your love, but I will take anything you give me and consider it paradise. You don’t need to change. Not for me. I love everything about you, and I will continue to do so until my last breath.” He cupped my face, and his thumbs brushed away my tears. “You are it for me, Rain. From now until the last star in the sky winks out, you are it for me.”
He kissed me, and I could feel the full weight of his words behind it, every ounce of his love for me, and I met it with my own. With everything I was capable of.
Perfectly imperfect. That’s what he was to me. And maybe, that’s what I was to him.
“Oh, my dear Raynella, I had so hoped Deylan was mistaken.”
A basso voice cut through the still night air, and I pulled back from Sin. My father stood in the doorway, watching us with a mixture of sadness and disappointment.
I stepped further away from Sin and wiped my hands down the front of my dress. I didn’t know why I was suddenly so nervous. I’d decided not to hide my relationship with Sin anymore, so my father was bound to find out sooner or later. There was something about the way he looked at me, though. As if finding out that I cared for Sin was in some way a great betrayal that hurt him personally.
“Father,” I said stiffly, unsure what to even say at this point. There were so many lies between us that I could barely remember how I was supposed to act around him.
“Dreisin, leave us please. I need to speak with my daughter,” he said in Rivellan.
“No,” I cut in, also in Rivellan. “Whatever you want to say to Sin, you can say to me. I don’t keep secrets from him.”
My father raised a single eyebrow at how smoothly I spoke his language. “You may not keep secrets from him, but it seems you have kept quite a few from me. What else have you been hiding from me, sweet daughter of mine?”
Anger rose up in me at his words, and I could feel the sparks coming to life underneath my skin. I took a step toward him, balling my fists at my sides.
“Are you kidding right now? You want to talk about secrets? You want to get it all out in the open? Fine. Why don’t you tell me why you ordered Dey to seduce me?”
Something like genuine shock appeared on my father’s face. And maybe, just maybe, a tiny bit embarrassment.
“My reasons for requesting that Deylan spend a substantial amount of time in your company are my own.”
“Right,” I said dryly. “Because you want to know everything I’m keeping from you but have no desire to share whatever twisted machinations have been cooking inside your head. How about we try this then? Why don’t you really tell me what happened with my mother, huh? I know the Walker didn’t kill her. I want to know the truth.”
“You truly wish to know what happened to your mother?” he asked, his face hard and unyielding.
“I do.”
“Then why don’t you ask the male standing beside you.”
Chapter forty-nine
Threads of icy fear wound through my veins as I stared at Sin. My father was lying. He had to be. Sin knew how badly I wanted to find out what happened to my mother. He would have never withheld it from me. Never.
Except the look on his face told me I couldn’t be more wrong.
“Rain,” he said, taking a step toward me.
