Oh, this hurts, I thought, trying to breathe. Struggling to breathe. It hurt so much.
I’d been rejected all my life. By my mother, by Jana, by my village. Even by Seerin before. I should’ve known. I should’ve known he wouldn’t have wanted me. No one else had before, so why would he?
He’d made me believe differently, however—if only for a little while. I hated him for it…because now I knew what it felt like to bewanted.
What waswrongwith me that made others discard me so easily?
“Nelle,” he rasped, approaching me.
“Don’t,” I pleaded, holding my hand out so he wouldn’t touch me. Because if he touched me, I would crumble completely. “D-don’t.”
He didn’t need to say anything else. His mind was already made up, I could see that. And it didn’t matter what I wanted. It never mattered.
“Did you ever love me?” I asked, voice trembling, though I kept it strong. A tactic I’d used with Grigg often, so he wouldn’t sense my fear. “At all?”
He said nothing. He met my eyes and said nothing.
And I felt like the universe’s most naive fool. A heartbroken fool.
I looked at him right in his eyes and I lookeddeep. Once, I’d been frightened to look too deeply because he’d been stealing my soul at the time.
I laughed, but it sounded too strange, even for me.
“Now it would seem we’re just two demons who possess one another’s souls, Seerin.” Finally, pain registered in his gaze, but it didn’t make me feel any better. It made me feel worse. Because even now, I didn’t want to hurt him. Not the way he was hurting me. “And believe me, I would give yours back to you if I knew how because I don’t want it. Not anymore.”
Turning, I walked towards the entrance of thevoliki, numbness cascading over me.
“Thissie,” he rumbled, twisting the knife with that word. “I am sorry.”
I closed my eyes before wiping away the tears on my cheeks.
He didn’t want me. It wouldn’t be the first time someone felt that way. But I vowed to myself that he would be the last.
“I hope you find everything you’re looking for, Seerin,” I whispered, so quietly I wasn’t sure he heard me. “I truly wish that for you.”
Then I left without looking back. And I knew, right at that moment, as cold wind slapped against my still-wet cheeks, that I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t stay in the horde that I’d grown to think of as my home.
After all this time, I would need to return to my village. Because the pain that I would feel remaining close to Seerin, knowing that he would choose another that was not me, knowing he’d never truly loved me, was nothing compared to the struggle I would face returning to the only other home I’d known.
I needed to leave. Though it was the height of the cold season, I needed to leave.
If I stayed, it would destroy whatever was left of me.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“You cannot be serious,” Odrii said, staring at me like I’d lost my mind. And perhaps I had, but all I could feel hours after Seerin had torn my heart from my chest wasnumb. “Nelle.Nik. I will not take you back. Your home is here.”
Avuli sat at the low table in hervoliki, Arlah at her side, looking between us. Though the young boy had learned a few words in the universal tongue, he looked confused by the exchange and his mother would not translate the conversation for him. She was looking at me, her expression knowing. As if she recognized heartbreak in me because she’d experienced it keenly herself when her mate had died in battle.
Her mate didn’t choose to leave her. He was taken.
Seerin, on the other hand, had willingly chosen this.
I hadn’t cried since I left hisvolikiearlier that morning. It was nearing evening and I simply felt…as detached as Seerin had seemed.
“I will return to my village with or without your help, Odrii,” I said softly, looking down at my hands. They were smooth and soft now, even during the cold season, probably because I’d been Seerin’salukkiri, spreading on his oils every night.
A sharp pinch in my chest made me squeeze my fists hard and I looked up at Odrii. The warrior male was looking at me with a thunderous expression, as if angry with me.
