Agravayn and Gaheris retreated as well. Lyrena escorted Mordred back the way we’d come. Veyka and I stood alone, on the center of a narrow spit of land at the center of the world.
She stared at me just as she had for the last several minutes, her blue eyes turned dull and fathomless. She stared, but she did not see me. Veyka may as well have been in the void for how far away she felt in that excruciating moment.
We’d once vowed honesty to each other. I was not ready to let her go. I would do anything to save her. That was my honest truth.
“Where is Cyara?” she asked again, the words rough and pained.
“I sent her after the grail,” I said honestly. “She took Percival and Diana with her. They know more about the Sacred Trinity than anyone, having grown up in Avalon. They are searching.”
“And the Faeries of the Fen?”
“I assume that Osheen and Maisri are with them now.” I hoped so, at least. There were not enough communication crystals to go around.
“You assume,” Veyka echoed. “If Cyara had found the grail, she would have called.”
Another truth.
“We can give her two more days.”
“The succubus could return for us. They are drawn to me.”
I held her gaze, but I felt my heart beginning to crack. “Isn’t your life worth waiting a few more days?”
She blinked. And then completely unraveled. As if I’d snapped the bonds holding her in place. “For what? Another disappointment?” She threw out her hand, spinning on the spot, gesturing to the armies encamped in either direction. “What are their lives worth, Arran? Why is my life worth more?”
I grabbed her shoulders. I could not stand another second without touching her, not when the world was determined to steal her away from me. My eyesburned. Burned with tears. I blinked them away, angry that my body dared to blur what might be my last image of her.
I shook her, harder than I should of, because it did not seem possible that she did not understand. “Becauseyouare mine.”
She was still shaking. Not me, but her. Her entire body shook as sobs rolled through her, tears that matched my own streaming down her cheeks. “And you are mine,” Veyka whispered. “But so are they.”
How had I ever called this female selfish? How had I not seen from the first time I met her the beautiful, singular soul that waited beneath her layers of self-crafted armor?
I had, that was the answer. I’d always suspected who she was at her core. What I had not expected was how deeply I would love her. The depth of the love she would give to me. To her friends.
Her friends.
I knew what I had to do, then. The last weapon I could deploy against my mate.
Fuck, she’s going to hate me.
“Will you deny your Knights the chance to say goodbye?” I asked.
Veyka wrenched out of my grip as if I’d struck her. But even that did not stop me. I knew I was hurting her, but I could notstop myself. Not if it gave Cyara a chance to find the grail, to find us, to save Veyka’s life.
I struck the last blow, hard and true. “Haven’t they lost enough already?”
Veyka stumbled back another step.
She was still shaking, but no fresh tears tracked down her cheeks. “Two days. Then we summon Cyara and Gwen and we end this.”
I was not surprised when she disappeared into the void rather than spend one more minute with me.
60
VEYKA
I wanted to go far. To the Spine. Beyond, past the lakes of Eilean Gayl to the uncharted north. Or to the far south, where the fabled witch isle waited off of Annwyn’s southwest coast. I wanted to go as far and as fast as my power could take me.
