“I’ll be fine. They should… they should choose,” he says softly. “You were right.”
“But—”
His lashes are black lace against his pale cheeks. “I should have come clean. Told them about their origin. Where’s the value of having someone stay because of lies? It’s my fault.”
My eyes burn as I free my arm from his grip. “Stay here. I’ll find them.”
“I was just… lonely…” he breathes, head bowing low.
Hells.
My chest is so tight I can barely breathe as I sprint through the temple, and it has nothing to do with tiredness. Those last words he whispered, the anguish in his eyes when Ardruna and Talton walked away, the despair in his voice when he accused me of wrecking his world…
He has no business making me feel like this. This… sympathy. This connectedness. This need to protect him, the same way he protected me from monsters, the need to protect his heart, the same way you’d protect a child from any pain.
He’s a grown fae male, I remind myself, a seasoned warrior, an old being. He knows how life is. You don’t need to hold hishand. He messed up and his friends walked out. That’s on him, not you.
But logic doesn’t apply here anymore. I have feelings for him. His pain hurts me. I want to help him get back with his family.
A light sparks and I gasp as Olm appears, walking beside me.
“Don’t do that!” I hiss.
He frowns. “You don’t want to look at me? Do you think me ugly?”
“No, it’s not that. You startled me.”
“So you don’t think I’m ugly.” He smirks. “Good to know.”
Good Gods…
“Ardruna!” I yell. “Talton! Are you here?”
My voice echoes through the temple. A bird flutters high up and flies around a pillar. I hadn’t realized there were nests in here. Maybe it got trapped inside?
Or is it Talton?
“Talton!” I turn in a circle, trying to see the ceiling. It’s lost in darkness, the lamps hanging between the columns only serving to vaguely illuminate its shape and gild a few carved details here and there. “Ardruna!”
No reply. They have truly left.
Of course they have. When you find out that the person you trusted, the man you thought you knew, was hiding huge secrets from you, secretsaboutyou, wouldn’t you take some time to think?
I come to a stop. It’s their right to stay away for a while. They will come back, right? I haven’t screwed this up completely? They are family. Ardruna said so.
Stop feeling guilty,I tell myself.He said it, too. Hiding the truth was a bad idea in the first place. You don’t build relationships on lies.
Yet, you could argue that stories are lies. All the myths and legends and fairytales I love so much are at least partly untrue. And this is a world made of tales.
Don’t confuse yourself, Aline. Ardruna and Talton may have originated in a book but their relationship with Roane is real and it obeys the same rules as any other.
Emotions warring inside me, I stomp back toward the nest. I want to be furious with him for hiding the truth not only from me, but from his friends. But I’m mainly sad. I had wondered from the start what it must be like to live all alone. He found a way to create a family for himself in a world full of monsters. How can I blame him for it?
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
BREAK AND ENTER
ADELINE
