“Yes,” I said, not stepping toward him. “I know it’s late but…”
The distance between us felt like it was slipping underneath my rib cage like a blade. When just a few nights ago, he’d been looking at me across the dinner table like I was all he ever wanted to look at again.
“Millie,” came my name, the word clipped but strangely vulnerable. “I—”
I closed my eyes briefly. “Please, Kythel.”
Please what?
Please…don’t? Don’t do whatever it is I see in your eyes?I thought.Please don’t break my fucking heart, even though I’d expected you to all along?
“What…what happened with the Kaazor?” I asked.
What had happened to make him decidethis?
“I can’t say,” he said after a long moment, finally beginning to close the distance between us. My neck tilted back with every step he took so I could continue to look into his eyes. “What I can say is that I…I wish it could be different, Millie. I wish I could be anyone else but who I am. Because that’s the only way I could have had you.”
My heart gave an ugly twist in my chest. My lungs wrung out all the air. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
“No,” I choked out. “You just wish it wasn’tme.”
Silver light from the moon cut his face in two when, in this moment, I needed to witness all of him, every cold line, every unyielding decision he’d made without me. The ancient trees of Stellara—dark, towering, starving guardians that had long kept the forest’s secrets in—witnessed us both, and I wondered what they saw. I wondered what they thought. If they could feel the way I began to tremble, if they could feel it vibrating their roots beneath my feet.
Did their gnarled roots tangle together under the damp earth? Could one tree pass on my budding misery to the next? Did they feel and drink the bitter ache of it?
“You think I’ll weaken your House. That I’ll shame your family. Your territory. Your people.”
All thoughts I’d had before. All thoughts I’d wished weren’t true. I’d moaned for him, burying those truths deep, even as he’d fed from me, distracted by the smell of his sweat, the addicting heat of his roughened palms, the copper tang of my blood on my eager tongue as he’d kissed me.
His brows furrowed. I heard his swallow and his rough growl as he said, “When did Ieversay that?”
“You didn’t have to,” I told him, focusing on the faceted ice of his moonlit eyes. I wanted to sink into the earth, clasping my hands with the roots of the trees, sharing in their memories, their judgments. “I already know.”
Instead of sinking, I remained within this pinching, aching realm. Behind him, I spied the glittering windows of the north wing of Erzos’s keep. I smelled the sweet, pungent rot ofsyaanberries on the warm breeze as it funneled through the clearing. I heard the creak of my open door behind me, the pop of the fire as it sparked violently in the freshly cleaned hearth.
“The truth is that you wish it had been someone else to spark the bond,” I said, my voice wavering, my gaze sliding past him to the blackness of the forest beyond. “A Kylorr female, of noble ancestry, who would bring you pride whenever you looked at her. But instead you got me. A human woman, found abandoned at a travel port, with nothing and no one, with no true home anymore. And you believe I am beneath you,Kyzaire.”
“That’s not fucking true,” he rasped, angry now, those eyes shooting blue fire in the darkness. “Don’t even say that, Millie.”
“If it weren’t for my blood, you would have never even noticed me,” I said. “But I didn’t care. And there’s a part of me that will always feel pathetic because of that.”
My shoulders were slumped, and that same pathetic part of myself I feared was feeling sorry for myself. Rejected. Cast aside for another person I could never, ever be.
“Are you going to marry her?” I whispered. I didn’t need to specify who. We both knew.
Kythel’s jaw tightened. “I have no choice. It’s been decided.”
His words felt like a hammer against an anvil, striking my heart.
“There’s always a choice,” I argued, hating the pleading note I heard in my voice. “You just don’t see it.”
“Andyoudon’t understand, Millie,” he said sharply. “It’s not always so simple. Especially for someone like me.”
I felt like I was making a mess of this, but Kythel looked hardly affected. Tears were dripping down my cheeks, and my throat felt unbearably tight.
“I love you,” came my miserable confession as I wrapped my arms around my torso. “But you already know that, don’t you?”
Kythel shook his head, his jaw tightening as if I hadn’t spoken at all, willingly ignoring the words that I had kept bottled for much too long. “Millie.I told you.I told you that I could only give you until the moon winds, then our agreement would end. I haven’t lied to you. I haven’t made you promises I couldn’t keep.”
