Maybe it would have been better to forget. To forget about Cassiel, to forget who he had been to her, to forget what he had done.
Yet she put a spell in place to remember.
And she … she regretted it. Dyna buried her face in her pillow, soaking it with her tears.
“Please,” Rawn cut in. “We must calm ourselves?—”
“I have no mind for your lectures right now, Lord Norrlen. I want to tear him apart for what he did to her, but I can’t!”
“Oi, put the chair down. Don’t break the?—”
“When she’s not screaming from her nightmares, she sits in her room like a ghost! She doesn’t move, doesn’t eat. She only stares at the sky. We all know what she’s waiting for, but he’s never coming back.”
Dyna flinched.
Never coming back.
Another crash of glass came, with it the rise of angry shouts. Each one battered against her head, and she couldn’t stand it anymore.
Snatching up the crystal necklace, she sprinted out of her room and down the hall.
“Dyna!” Zev called after her as she darted down the stairs.
Her legs pumped with every beat of her heart. She burst out of the backdoors of the manor, running into the courtyard. The harsh cold pricked her skin, the wind tugging at her nightgown and hair. The call of voices sent her sprinting into the woods. Sleet whipped past Dyna’s eyes, blinding her, as she fled through the trees.
It was the same as nine years ago.
Back then, she had run toward theHyalustree.
Where was she running to now? She didn’t know.
She simply had to run.
Her bare feet slid over the snow as she ran and ran from the emptiness in her chest. From the well of anger and pain. From every damn memory in that manor. She ran from the fact that she couldn’t sleep without him. Couldn’t breathe without him.
Dyna kept running until she reached the lake.
And she screamed.
The sound tore out of her throat as she simply let it all out with a heart-wrenching cry. Pitching back her arm, she flung the crystal necklace with all her might. It sailed through the night sky like a shooting star and plinked into the black depths of the lake.
It belonged with the version of her that died there.
With the girl who had been so in love, who had yet to be betrayed by the one person whom she thought never would.
Cassiel deserted her.
He left her stuck in a place where she couldn’t follow him because he thought her too weak. He had always thought that. And every single word he had said to her that day was branded on the crushed pieces of her heart.
You don’t belong in my world. I don’t want you in it…
I don’t want you.
I don’t want you.
I don’t want you.
Dyna tripped and fell against a tree, breaking down in the snow. The harsh winter air coated her lungs with every gasping sob. How could she let go of the one person who felt like home? Because without him, she was dying.
