And I knew, I fucking knew it deep in my bones, if I didn’t shift accordingly, everything would be lost.
They’d all fall.
I scrubbed my hand over my face.
“You see, it’s always one step away from you being acted upon. To being punished for just being what you are.”
Those words of his… the punishment he’d referred to would touch my loves too now, those who hadn’t signed up for this by being my blood. Those who had been yanked into it by the most innocent thing of all—their love for me.
Something that all of this could twist irreparably.
No. Worse. Something it could poison beyond saving.
How the fuck could I balance these two worlds without breaking something in the process?
I reached out and grasped Evira’s hand on me.
As I felt her raw conviction and adoration, as I looked out and felt the same from Zayn and Vax… I couldn’t even bear the notion of it. Of breakingthem.
Us.
Even if it meant saving them.
And what kind of person would it make me if I couldn’t step up and do that if it came down to it?
Was there sometimes no choice?
Was there no other way to protect those I loved than by shattering them?
9
~Evira~
It had been jarring coming back to Loxley Academy.
Even after just being away for a couple of days.
It had certainly felt longer with the weight of it all.
The Ruxnoth nightmare.
Winter’s stance on it.
Vaxan risking not just his standing in the Basilisk Kingdom, but also his very title as High Lord Heir of the Excetra Crown.
And then me temporarily abdicating as Crown Heir myself.
Temporarilywas exactly the way I’d described it to Winter.
But that part had seemed to fly right on by him. All he’d heard was me having something stripped from me because of him.
At least at first. Until I’d managed to get through to him.
I’d had to liken his response—him taking the weight ofmyown decision onto him—to what Torvek had done when he’d attacked Winter in a misguided act of chivalry and protection. I knew it wasn’t the same for Winter—there was a whole lot behind him reacting like that. Honestly, it was an open, pouring wound when it came to the self-flagellation of it all with him. It had taken two days of him sitting with that to accept that Iconsidered stepping down to be the best thing for me right now. Not just because it had been asked of me. I wouldn’t be living in the Dracoryn Realm for the next four years, for goodness sake. I’d wanted the freedom to explore, to find out who I was and what I could possibly be beyond all of that.
I stared down at the text I’d sent Vaxan two minutes ago.
Evira:Need to talk before our date night. My suite, mighty lord. Come quietly.
