“I can’t do that.” His voice broke on the last word.
“You can. You must.” She couldn’t stop the tears from tracking down her cheeks, but her voice held. “It is the only way I can live with this choice. If you truly love me, I beg you, give me this.Please, Noah. For Emily.”
She watched the determination in his eyes shatter. Saw the cost of her request on his face and knew she would carry the memory of this moment with her through every hollow day thatstretched ahead. She saw the strength it took for him to swallow the protest still burning on his tongue, to push down the fury and the grief and the desperate refusal.
Long moments passed as he forced his body to relax against Taran’s restraint. Finally, his mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
His voice broke. Failed. She watched him struggle to try again. “I…” He shook his head, gritted his teeth and tried again, “…promise.” It came in a whisper so faint it barely stirred the air between them.
Skye closed her eyes, pressing the feel of him, of his heartbeat, into her memory. Then she turned to Austin, wiped her face with the back of her hands and squared her shoulders against the trembling that threatened to undo everything she’d fought to hold together.
“Our future together depends on you keeping the promises you’ve made here tonight.”
Austin nodded with the satisfied calm of a man who believed he’d won. “Of course. But their weapons must be surrendered. They’ll be surrounded by my guards as we move through the Citadel so if we are observed, there will be no question of my authority.”
“You want us tae just hand o’er our weapons andtrustwhere ye’ll take us? What will happen when we get there?” Taran’s voice cut through, tight and dangerous. “Why should we trust ye tae keep yer word? All I’ve ever known of ye are lies and betrayal. Ye turned yer back on your own sister. Why should I ken yer promises tae Skye will be any different? For all we ken, we’ll end up in the same cell she just vacated.”
Austin glanced at Skye, and the naked ambition in his eyes confirmed everything she’d always suspected about him. “Because she is the key to my victory. My triumph over everything I left behind in that miserable world and everythingI’ve overcome in this one. Getting rid of the lot of you permanently is a small enough price to pay for her willing submission to me.” His gaze slid to Noah. “Inallthings.”
Noah’s guttural cry of fury echoed through the labyrinth as he lunged for Austin. The guards raised their weapons, but Taran shoved him aside before he could reach his target.
As Noah regained his footing Skye went to him, cupped his face in her hands and held his gaze as she poured every ounce of love she possessed into it, everything she couldn’t say with Austin looking on. Her lips silently mouthed the words she needed him to carry through whatever came next.
I love you. I will always love you.
“The bargain is made,” she finally said aloud, struggling against the tremor in her voice. “You must focus on Emily now, Noah. Save her. Don’t let this be for naught.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Skye fixed her eyes on Noah’s back as Austin’s guards marched them through the Citadel’s lower passages. Austin had positioned her at his side the moment they left the deep cells, his grip on her elbow light but deliberate. She allowed it. Fought every instinct that screamed at her to wrench free, and allowed it.
Ahead, Noah walked with his hands fisted and his shoulders rigid, stripped of the sword he’d carried into the labyrinth to find her. Taran and Finn flanked him, equally disarmed. Keir led the group, guiding them to Paige and the children through turns and passageways Skye herself barely recognized. Her longtime, loyal protector’s jaw was set in the expression of a man who fully understood what his betrayal of the Keeper would cost him. And still, he’d been willing to pay it.
What had she cost them? All of them? This family who only sought help for a child, who’d accepted her into their fold simply for who she was.
She couldn’t ignore the fury revealed in the set of Noah’s spine. The barely contained rage in every measured step. And beneath it all, the devastation. She’d watched it crush him when she’d made her bargain. Watched as he wrenched the promiseshe’d demanded from his lips like something torn from living flesh. The memory of it sat in her chest like a stone.
She’d had to. For Emily.
She summoned the child’s face. Those beautiful eyes, enormous in a face grown pale and gaunt. The shallow breaths that came slower and more tortured. She held that image before her like a shield because without it, the weight of what she’d agreed to would crush her where she stood. She would not let herself imagine the years ahead, hollow and suffocating, chained to a man whose ambition had consumed every remnant of decency he might once have possessed. If she allowed even a single thought of that future to take root, her courage would fail.
So she thought of Emily. Only Emily. And kept walking.
Keir stopped before a narrow archway that opened into a darkened corridor, one hand raised. “Through here, quickly. Quietly.”
They filed through in near silence. The passage opened into a small alcove off the long-abandoned kitchen, its hearth cold and blackened, shelves bare except for a few cracked clay pots. In an adjacent storeroom, half concealed behind old crates, Skye saw Paige sitting on the stone floor with Brody asleep at her hip and Emily’s stretcher on the other side, a single candle throwing unsteady shadows across the cold, cramped space.
Paige’s head snapped up at the sound of their approach. Relief filled her eyes as she watched them enter, then froze instantly when she recognized Austin. The joyful sob that tore from her was so raw it broke Skye’s heart all over again.
“Austin!” She scrambled to her feet, easing Brody aside, and crossed the space in three strides. Her arms enveloped her brother before he could react, her hands fisting the back of his tunic as she pressed her cheek to his. “Thank God. Thank God you’re here. I knew you’d come. I knew you’d help.”
Austin tensed, standing perfectly still, his arms at his sides. His face betrayed nothing but the faintest tightening around his eyes as he stared fixedly at the far wall.
Skye ached for Paige, knowing what was coming.
“Please, Austin.” Paige stepped back, her voice cracking. “Just talk to me.”
“Let it go, Paige.” He finally said, his voice flat and cold. He still refused to look at her. “Letmego. Can’t you see it’s too late? I’m not the person you think I am.” Something passed across his face, gone before Skye could name it. “I never was.”
