As I stepped inside, my lungs moved, but it was like sucking in wind through oil. If I lost her to this place, if she dissolved behind those chains before I could reach her, there would be no one left to come back for. I could taste that truth on my tongue. If she died, I would follow, and I accepted that.
Reyla's gaze met mine. “I'm sorry.” Her head drooped, and a tangle of her hair caught on one of the links.
Her words, so lost and dejected, gutted me.
“I failed you,” she said. “I should’ve done more.”
Never, Wildfire. Never.
I hated the finality in her words, as if she’d already decided I was worth more than she was. She wasn’t only tired and sad. She wasempty. My bones fractured, and I wanted to scream her name loud enough to stitch her back together. But the sound stayed trapped in that tender part of me where hope used to thrive.
I could not save her. She had to save herself.
The chains bristled when I approached. Lashing out, one caught my arm, drawing blood, before whipping back to coil tighter around her.
When she winced, it was all I could do not to drop to my knees and tip my head back and scream.
“Don’t,” I snarled, looking for something to rip apart. “Donothurt her.”
More shackles jutted up from the stone at my feet, and I could swear the room vibrated with my anger.
I summoned everything, flame, will, all the power I possessed. Magic crackled down my arms, and I sent it at her bindings. Instead of breaking, the chains coiled tighter, encircling her body in a closing fist.
Iwas hurting her.Me.Again.
My strength, the thing I’d once thought would always save her, curled around her throat in a noose. And deep inside, I felt her slipping, the thread between us stretching so fine I could no longer tell if it was fraying or breaking.
“I have to stop,” I snarled. “It’s pulling fromme.”
Magic fizzled in my hands. Force would not win this.
It took every ounce of stubbornness I had in me to step back, to stop reaching for fire and lightning and icy blades. This wasn’t that sort of battle. I was a creature made for war, and every instinct screamed to end this with fire. But war wouldn’t help her here. Rage wouldn’t hold her together. I had to be the thing I never thought I could be—still.
So I swallowed my power and anger until my chest ached with the taint. Using force meant risking more harm to the only person I couldn’t bear to lose. I stood there, completely empty, holding nothing but my name and the echo of her laughter. And the fates help me, it had to be enough.
She was the only person who could make me feel real. Without her, I was a collection of borrowed pieces stitched together from mistakes that meant nothing without her fire beside them.
I turned my hands outward, showing the raw cuts on my arms from her restraints.
“You’re wrong,” I said to the room, to her, to myself. “I failedyou, Reyla. I wasn’t fast enough when the borgon rushed toward me. I wasn’t strong enough to stop Prager. When I was supposed to protect you, I could not.”
The air shifted as if it was listening.
“I’ve hidden things,” I said. “I let the curse eat at me, holding it all back, thinking this would protect you from the insecurities that drove my every action. All that did was rob you of the truth. That I’ve been scared, too. Scared I wasn’t what you needed.Scared you’d see the man behind the crown and just…walk away.”
What did I have to offer her other than more pain?
The chains hissed, but I sensed they weren't angry. Maybe curious. Watching.
“You think your love, your very essence, makes you weak? I see you, Wildfire. I see how you care for everyone, but very rarely yourself. The way you held strong when your father tried to steal what belonged to you alone. I saw the way you fought the borgons with nothing but steel and grit. The way you nearly fractured when you knelt beside me in the marketplace and begged me to stay with you.”
A link slackened, the tiniest twitch.
“You won’t say it, but you blame yourself for every tiny thing you couldn't fix in our court. Every person you couldn’t save from the borgons. You hide your fear behind plans, but I see you. I always have, and I love you even more for all that you are.”
I stepped forward and stroked her cheek, infusing my touch with the honest, unconditional truth, the emotional core of who I was.
Her bindings shuddered again.
