“Your application landed on my desk, and you showed up at the Maiden Selection. And then, that night,hecame into my office more worked up than I’d seen him in nearly a decade. And I pieced together what he’d told me about the girl he’d met at the pharmacy, the one who’d triggered his first memory in a decade, and I knew?—”
“What?”
“I knew you’d be able to do what I couldn’t.” His voice broke, and he bowed his head, fighting to collect himself before meeting my gaze. “Quinn, please know…I’ve wanted that more than anything. For him to stop living in the dark. But at the same time, knowing it couldn’t be me who did it, I couldn’t bear the thought of it. Not once it actually became possible. Because either way, it meant…”
“He was mine, too?”
Kingston shook his head, dropping his gaze again. “That I’d lost him.”
I touched his cheek, lifting his eyes to mine. “But Kingston, you haven’t lost him. Youwon’tlose him. Not because of me. I’m actively brainstorming ways to bring you all together. The thought of you—any of you—wanting this for more than just me? Iwantthat. I don’t want you to see things between me and Landon as you losing him.”
He smiled at me the way he usually did when I asked why me, and for the first time, I understood what he meant.
“Quinn, the truth is…I lost him a long time ago, and I’ve been holding onto who he was, doing everything in my power to stop this place. First, because of what it stole from me. Fromus. But then, the more I uncovered the truth, it became about so many other reasons. And I believed—Istill believe—with everything I am thatyoucan do it.”
I glanced back at the tombstone, shrinking in the distance behind us. And a question formed in my mind that I wasn’t sure I wanted an answer to. Which, of course, now meant I had to ask it.
“What you feel for me…” I met his gaze. “Is it just?—?”
“No, love.” He squeezed my hand, urging me to believe him. “What I feel for you has nothing to do with what you mean to him. I won’t lie and say it doesn’t make me indescribably happy that you fell for each other, too. But what I felt about you, andfor you, came before Landon ever rushed into my office. What I meant was that, when you pulled him from the dark, it was the first time I believed I could do what I set out to doandhave Landon remember the past without the threat of losing him to it.”
“What Landon lost…because of your father, who was it?”
“His mother.”
My mind jumped to the blank tombstone, horrified at the thought of Drake D’Arthur burying Landon’s mother in an unmarked grave, beside one marked with his.
“No,” Kingston rushed out. “No, she’s not there.”
I searched around the cemetery, scanning the tombstones as if I might find her.
But Kingston shook his head. “She’s not here, Quinn. Landon’s mother is buried in a place where Landon can always see it, even if he doesn’t remember she’s there. At least, not here.” He touched his temple again, and my gaze fell to his heart. “If there’s a chance his heart remembers, my father wanted her grave to be where he’d see it, if ever he got too close to me.”
“Fuck, Kingston.” I locked eyes with him, my mouth agape as shock coursed through me. “Seriously. The literal worst.”
“I know.” He nodded, taking my hand.
“Where is she?”
His hands trembled. “Pendragon Estate. As a reminder that, even though he has no rights to my home, he always has ways of hurting me there.”
“Oh my god…” My body shook as we stood there, halfway between the grave and leaving it behind, and I couldn’t understand how his father could be so cruel—what kind of monster did these things to his son—I only wished I could take Kingston’s pain away. “I’m so sorry.”
He brushed his hand across my cheek, staring into my eyes as I processed everything he’d told me. I covered his hand with mine, unsure if it shook because of me or him.
“Sometimes, I wish I’d found a way to do this without involving you. Without having to share these terrible things with you. But the more things play out, the more I believe you were meant to find us here.”
I nodded because I’d felt that, too.
“I’ve done everything I can to keep you safe, to get you to the end. I became so focused on how to stay one step ahead. Too focused. And I lost sight ofwhyI needed to get there to begin with. So much so that I tried to convince myself I’d sacrifice him. Tell him this secret that might break him, if it meant making it to the end of this. But I couldn’t do even that because…”
He paused, staring off into the distance where the grave rested, before facing me. Words trapped behind his lips that he desperately wanted to say, but had conditioned himself to keep locked inside him.
Except I was there with him.
I understood.
And I released them first, hoping he’d know it was safe for him to do it, too.
