“I shouldn’t have let myself fall in love with him.” She shut her eyes. “When I learned of the bond, I should have accepted it as merely an accident.”
“Dyna.”
“You tried to tell me Zev. Now I understand. We never belonged together.”
He sighed. “You cannot let this break you.”
She scoffed softly. “What is it you said to me before?”
You cannot fix what is already broken.
Dyna laid down onto her back, staring up at the canopy. “My whole life I studied to heal nearly any wound but this one.” Her small fist pressed against her heart. “It hurts. This pain, I cannot see it, but I feel it. There’s a hole in my heart where he used to be, and there is nothing I can do to fill it. And I despise it.” Her lashes fluttered closed. “I try to imagine myself as the person I once was, and not what remains of her. But all I have left are shards of who I used to be.” Her next confession made him fall still. “I had been taking Witch’s Brew to cope. Because if I sleep, I see him, and when I don’t, I hear him. Every time I hear the flutter of wings, I think he has returned.”
It broke Zev to hear that. How did he not see her suffering so much? Enough that she felt the need to drug herself.
Silent tears rolled down her temples, glinting in the firelight. “He took a part of me with him. How do I get her back?”
Zev didn’t have an answer.
He wasn’t who he used to be, either. Maybe it wasn’t possible. With enough bruises and scars, life left its mark.
Dyna’s breath evened out as she fell asleep. His brow furrowed as he watched her. Seeing her suffer like this enraged him. He didn’t know how to fix it.
With a sigh, he slipped her arm under the blanket, but he noticed something clutched in her palm. It was a small leather pouch. He carefully slipped it out of her fingers and opened it.
His stomach clenched at the sight of the red feather inside.
The wind blew gently against the trees, making the leaves rattle. It carried the earthy smells of the forest and the sweetness of spring. Beneath it hovered a distinct scent he had come to loathe.
Zev silently stood and walked away from the campfire into the shadowy trees. He heard fluttering wings and kept chasing them down until the woods receded. He came out onto a high crag. A soft orange hue fell over him with the sunset.
He spun around, searching the dark branches of the woods where the light didn’t reach. “I know you heard me that night when I warned you to stay away from her,” he snarled.
“I do not take orders from you, wolf,” a voice replied.
“You serve no purpose here. Leave!” His shout echoed over the rocky hill.
“Her life is bound to the life of the High King. My purpose is to make sure she stays alive.”
Zev growled. “That is not your place anymore.”
The branches creaked, and Zev’s eyes snapped to a dark figure standing in the trees.
“You have been lurking around her, haven’t you? You kept out of sight all these months, but you’ve been daring to come closer. Working up the nerve to show yourself,” he realized. “Why now? What do you want?”
Silence filled the brush of the wind. The longer he stood there waiting, he eventually realized she wouldn’t say.
Zev turned to leave. “I meant what I said, Lieutenant. I will not warn you again.”
But he halted in place when he noticed Dyna standing behind him.
CHAPTER 39
Dynalya
Shock stole Dyna’s breath. She rushed forward, ignoring Zev’s sputtering. Yet who he spoke to quickly retreated into the growing darkness before her eyes could truly confirm who it was. She may not have gotten a good look, but there was no mistaking what she had overheard.
Pushing past Zev, she shouted up at the trees, “Sowmya! Come out. I know you’re there!”
