I hate you.
I hate you.
Cassiel looked up at the sunlight pouring in from the windows, letting it blind him until his vision burned.
He would give anything to go back.
To the life he once lived when he had been ignorant of what true suffering was. To the moment before everything went wrong. Before he understood what being there for someone truly meant. If he knew then what he knew now, would it have made a difference?
But it didn’t matter how sorry he was.
He had realized too late the damage fear could do.
It still lurked around him like a poisonous fog, suffocating him with the thoughts of what could still happen.
Because leaving had changed nothing, and Dyna was in danger now more than ever.
Cassiel pressed on his aching temples. He refused to let history repeat itself because he wasn’t strong enough or fast enough to prevent it. If she could only give him one more chance, he wouldn’t make the same mistakes again.
Taking a deep breath, Cassiel walked outside and followed the faint link of their bond through the garden paths until he reached the stables. He found her there, speaking to the young lord on a white horse.
Noticing him, Dyna glowered and said to Raiden. “Would you be so kind as to take me away from here?”
Raiden glanced at Cassiel, then said, “Of course.”
Taking her hand, he helped her mount the horse and sit in front of him. She was that desperate to escape him? Raiden placed his arm around her waist, holding her securely against him. The sight made Cassiel’s jaw clench.
Tugging on the reins, Raiden maneuvered the horse to trot around him. “King of Hilos,” he greeted in a reserved tone.
“I am sorry to hear about your father,” Cassiel said, eyeing him warily. “I don’t know another nobler than him.”
“So I am told. However, I am yet to be told the same of you.”
Well.
Cassiel frowned at Dyna. “Where are you going?”
“That no longer concerns you,” she said without looking at him. “Don’t follow me.”
Raiden snapped the reins, and the horse broke into a gallop. Dust rose on the path as Cassiel watched another ride off with his mate.
He sat on a barrel and leaned forward with his throbbing head in his hands. These damn headaches.
“That one is encroaching on your territory. Shall I kill him? I could make it look like an accident.”
Smirking, Cassiel looked up at Netanel. His spy leaned up against the stable with his arms crossed, the shadows of his dark cloak obscuring his face. “No, don’t do that.”
“Are you sure? The world has enough spoiled lordlings. No one would miss him.”
Cassiel laughed dryly and rubbed his face. “I sometimes wonder if you’re half mad. Why else follow a tyrant king who burned down a Realm, who curses everything he touches … who lost…”his queen.He couldn’t bring himself to say it aloud, because it meant he really did lose everything.
“Every night I see her face when she begged me not to leave her. I truly believed it was the only way. How wrong I was. I wish to go back. I wish to erase everything…” The back of Cassiel’s eyes burned, and he pressed on his eyelids.
He had been unraveling these past months, tumbling through the sky with no end. When she appeared again, he finally stopped falling, as if he had reached the foundation of the world. But the ground had swallowed him whole.
She told him not to hope, yet hope was all he had left.
He clung to it like a disease.
