“I’m certain of it.”
A smile flashes across his face, a brightness that lights up his eyes to a breathtaking emerald. With it, all of his savage beauty intensifies, making my heart pound. But his expression darkens so quickly and completely that it’s a crash back to reality.
“Hope is dangerous,” he says, his voice hard. “You said it yourself: Your visions are warnings of harm.”
Just like that, he pulls away from me, snatches up his helmet from the other side of the room, and shoves it over his head.
I’m not about to let go of my hope, rising to my feet and following after him. “No, I said my visions allow me topreventharm. To help others. Retrieving the hammer is the first step to doing something good?—”
He spins to me so fast that he nearly knocks me over, but my reflexes are fast, my quick repositioning keeping me upright.
Regret floods his eyes, unmissable.
“I am not good,” he snarls. “I’m not capable ofgoodness. I am lies and death and pain.”
I stand my ground. “And that’s all you expect in return.”
Squaring my shoulders, I tip up my chin and face his rage.
All this rage because the chance of hope,realhope, can only be terrifying to him after a life lived with murder, trauma, and betrayal.
He takes a simmering step toward me, but I respond with a command. “You will take me to Mount Vividari, Antony, King of Iron. I will retrieve that hammer. And you will protect me from anyone who tries to stop me.”
I surge toward him, meeting his forward momentum. “Because I will be the spark of hope in the darkness. I will carry that burden, and I will hold its weight for both of us.”
In his wild green eyes, I see once again his beauty, but nowmore clearly, I understand how his nature is defined by violent intentions. Always, the expectation of pain.
He can’t hold hope for longer than a heartbeat because it’s too treacherous. Too quickly stripped away and mutilated.
I lower my voice, fighting my own fear that I, too, will crash and fail. “Will you let me carry this weight?”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Antony
Thyra’s asking me for a faith I don’t have.
And yet, she recognizes I can’t hold it.
She’s offering to carry it for me.
On her narrow shoulders. In her small hands.
Angry tears burn behind my eyes, a physical reaction I wouldn’t have even had to battle before I met her, because tears and sorrow and grief were weaknesses I banished years ago.
If I push past Thyra’s power to end the curse and to define my fate, and past her ability to send my body and my senses into overdrive, because, even now, I’d give anything to push her up against the wall and coax needy moans from her mouth…
Could it be that she is simply my hope?
A single truth in my world of lies.
She tips up her chin, the silver in her hair catching the light, the metallic threads hugging her curves, transforming her into a softly shining beacon.
I find myself saying, “Yes.”
Even though I’m a fucking liar and I have no right to accept anything more from her.
“Yes.”
