Luelle politely stepped aside, allowing Seda to walk through. Seda glared at him as she walked past, hoping her eyes stabbed him in his stupid face as she entered the small, brightly lit room with a large table.
She looked back at Elco and said, “You wait here, too, please. I’ll be out shortly. This room doesn’t look big enough to fit you.”
Elco stared at her and puffed out his chest. “I’ll stay at this door until you come out. Call me if you need anything. Iwillmake myself fitif I have to,” he replied.
She nodded in response and entered the room, choosing not to sit at the table and instead standing in the far corner with her arms crossed over her chest.
Cahir stepped in, and Seda glanced at him, taking in his new appearance. He must have grown a foot in height between his human and Fae forms. His teeth and ears were pointed, and his skin had that slight luster of jade to it.
She didn’t know him at all.
Anger simmered beneath her skin, and hot tears began blurring her eyes. She looked away, unable to handle his betrayal any longer.
Cahir walked to the table and sat down, his chair squeaking under him. He took his crown off and set it aside, placing his hands on the table with his palms facing up. She glanced back at him and glared, a single tear quickly falling from her left eye.
“I’m sorry, Seda. I have more to say, but I want to be sure you hear that first, in the middle of this, and for the rest of your life. I’ll never forgive myself for hurting you.Ever. I’ve broken your trust, and I’ll doeverythingto gain it back, if you’ll allow me,” Cahir said as he stared at her.
The single tear that slipped free felt like molten glass sliding down her cheek and onto her clothing. She stared at his stupid palms on the table next to his stupid-looking crown. She took a deep breath and choked out, “I trusted you with everything I had, and the entire time you were lying to me. You played me like a fucking fool.” She laughed and aggressively wiped the remnants of the tear from her cheek. “It feels like you ripped my heart out and stomped on it when all I had for you was love and trust. Why? What was itfor?”
She looked away from him, unable to meet his dishonest face, expecting more lies in return.
He replied softly, “To save Umbrea.”
She ground her teeth together, feeling a twitch in her jaw.
“How did being friends with me save your kingdom?” she seethed.
She stared at a small mark on the wall, keeping her focus there instead of on him.
He sighed. “It hasn’t.”
She looked back at him and sneered, “What do you mean, ‘it hasn’t’? Are you saying that all those years of your fake friendship were for nothing?”
“It was never fake, Seda. I’ve always been your friend. From the moment I met you at the Gardvord.”
She let out an angry sob, pressing her clenched fist over her mouth as she remembered the day he had entered and announced he was the new member of her division. Seda had been alone in that department before, and she felt anxious about having someone else with her. Being alone with a man in the same room had caused her to break down and collapse. Cahir had run up toher, catching her just as she was about to hit the ground. When her vision had cleared, she panicked and scratched him for touching her. He apologized repeatedly, moved his desk to the opposite side of the room, and didn’t speak to her for a week. One day, he came in with a honey cake and a cup of coffee, placed them on her desk as he walked by, and said nothing. She had hesitated too long before poking the cake and taking that first sip, but eventually she gave in. The next day, he brought her another cup of coffee and another honey cake.
“No, we werenotfriends on that first day,” she corrected him, looking back at her favorite spot on the wall.
Cahir smirked, and she quickly looked back at him, scoffing in return. The familiar dimples she remembered so well showed, and her heart lurched.
“From the first day. I could see how you needed someone in your life who just flowed through your waves the way you needed,” he said.
She watched him, tears blurring her vision. “Tell me everything, Cahir. I want the truth.”
He didn’t correct her on his name.
She could see him nod through her impaired vision and hear him take a deep breath before he said, “It started thirty years ago. Tahti, the Oracle witch, called for me, saying a ‘key’ was born. A key that would save Umbrea, a key that would save all of Xyberus. I was foolish back then and thought she was insane. How could a ‘key’ be born? I didn’t care what happened in the lower half of Xyberus as long as Umbrea was safe, and it was until a few years ago. A Jotnar found its way past our borders and tore through a small village. The Fae brought it down and disposed of the body, but another came. We worked alongside the Lycanthropes to secure our borders and formed a fragile alliance with them, but that’s a story for another time.”
He paused and watched her. She listened while she glared at his open palms on the table.
“After that, I went to Tahti again and asked her to recount what she had told me. She said that I needed to travel to Joro to find you and the Dark Stone, but first I had to visit the Wisps. So I did.” He took a deep breath, ran his hands down his face, and placed them back on the table. “The Wisps, as you may or may not know, require a payment to grant a wish. I wished to find you. They transformed me into a human, told me I wasn’t allowed to tell you anything about this world outside of Joro, about who I really was, about any of it. They also said I wasn’t allowed to lie to you, Seda. Throughout that entire time, I never lied directly. And it was hard, so fucking hard navigating around that. If I broke my deal with them, I could’ve been banished back here.” He placed his hand over his chest. “I’m truly sorry that I had to tell you partial truths to hide the full truth. I tried so hard, so many times, to confess. Especially towards the end, when your safety was at risk and my time as a human was running out.”
Seda braved stepping away from the wall and walked up to the table. She pulled out a chair a few spaces down from him and sat down. She stared at him, at the honest look on his face, at the way his palms remained upright on the table. “Was any of it true?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“It… you told me you loved me. You told me we would be together, always. We were trying to have ababy, Cahir.”
