“I did,” he admitted faintly.
“Did you erase my memories against my will?”
He closed his wet eyes. “Yes.”
When she spoke again, her voice had dropped to an impassive murmur. “How could you think I would ever forgive you?”
Cassiel’s gut twisted into knots. He hugged her waist, pressing his face against her stomach. “Please,” he wept. “Please.”
She took a shaky breath. “I can’t.”
What those words did to him, they almost left him a mess in the mud.
Dyna removed his arms. All the emotion faded from her face with a low exhale. “What you did killed me, Cassiel. That girl you met in Hilos is dead. As far as I’m concerned, you are dead to me, too.”
Like in the wine cellar, she took a deliberate step back across the threshold of the gates. With a flick of her hand, they slammed shut between them. Cassiel shook his head, reaching through the bars for her. The last time he was in a position like this, he had been a child. He was helpless to stop anyone from leaving.
A sob caught in his throat. “Dyna,” Cassiel called to her retreating back. “I beg you.”
“Beg?” Her next words were like ice on his skin. “Go on, then.Beg me.” Dyna looked him dead in the eyes, and the emptiness in them shook the foundation of his existence. “Beg me more than I begged you. But not even that will change my mind … because you don’t belong in my world. I don’t want you in it.I don’t accept the bond.”
Cassiel inwardly flinched at the attack of his own words. He bit back a groan as another strand in their fraying bond snapped. Only one remained. The main strand that tied them together, but everything that had constructed their bond was gone.
The shock of it stole all the air out of his lungs. Cassiel slumped back on his heels, watching the one who used to be his world walk away from him. Dyna went into the estate without looking back. The heavy doors shut behind her, and the shield dissolved away.
Tears rolled down his face as he thought of the sweet, innocent girl he once met in a forest. The one who smiled freely at him like he wassomeone. He was nothing to her anymore.
Part of Cassiel didn’t want to believe this reality, yet he had no one to blame this time. Long ago, his mother once told him nothing lasts forever. Perhaps forever was a word meant for memories and not people.
But even memories didn’t last.
CHAPTER 48
Dynalya
Dyna felt her strength vanish the moment Cassiel was gone from her sight. She was filled with such a keen sense of loss, it took all her will not to break down behind the front door. Her steps moved silently across the foyer, and worried eyes followed her. Her composure remained in place as she climbed the steps to her bedroom. Dyna walked through and shut the door. Her lungs spasmed with ragged breaths. A tear fell, then another, and she collapsed against the wall as she sobbed through it all.
Her body shook with it. Her legs gave out, and she dropped to her hands and knees. Her vision blurred, and droplets hit the floor beside her clenched fists.
It had been torturous to see him. Even more to say goodbye.
Lucenna knelt next to her.
A sob shuddered through Dyna’s throat. “Why is it that I have my magic back, and yet I have never felt so helpless? It hurts. It hurts so much.”
Lucenna hugged her tight, and she clung to her, trying to muffle her sobs. She cried uncontrollably, as if another part of her had died. It probably had. She didn’t cry merely over the end of their marriage. It was everything that had happened since she walked out of the front door of her cottage.
Dyna wept for the girl she had been.
The day she left home, she was searching for the power to fight more than the Shadow, but the darkness within herself, believing somehow itwould bring her happiness. Dyna thought she had found it when she met an enchanting prince in a glass tree who lured her into his life with a gentle melody.
But she was beginning to believe happiness was unattainable, and this was the extent of her life.
Twilight came and passed,draping the room in a dull darkness. Lucenna stood to light the hearth, but Dyna told her to leave it, and that she wanted to be alone. She didn’t move from her spot against the wall or answer anyone coming to knock on the door. The storming skies rumbled with distant thunder. Eventually came the flash of lightning, and the glass doors of her balcony pattered with rain. For hours she sat on the floor, watching the deluge fall over Sellav.
Cassiel was still out there.
She could feel him.
