And even when the realms found peace, it’s been war between Kel and I ever since.
One of the lady’s maids turns the corner and stops short when she sees us. “Oh, excuse me!”
“We’re making a scene,” I murmur.
“Well, I’m not fucking done.” Kel surges toward me, encasing me in his huge shadow. Both his height and the width of his shoulders are enough to engulf me. “You don’t get to come into my home and pretend you’re part of my family. It doesn’t matter that you’re Rosalina’s mate. I will never let you hurt her the way you hurt me.”
My heart races. Each word shoots through me like a dagger. My body wants to collapse to the ground, but I force myself to stay standing, staring at him. “Enough. We’re not doing this here for your whole damned staff to hear.” Briars snake up my legs, then his. I don’t know where I’m taking us, just anywhere but this keep, where we made so many vows of love and broke even more.
The briars whip us under the earth, my subconscious flinging us somewhere beyond my comprehension. It’s not until we shoot through the frozen ground, the wind howling and tearing at my clothes and hair, that I realize where we are.
The Anelkrol Badlands. The ice-covered wasteland across which Kel and I fought, battling for control of the rose.
Well, things certainly haven’t changed. Though that same rose may now be in the possession of a human man and neither of us fight for it, another rose now blooms before us.
But I don’t want her for myself.
I want?—
How do I say the words? Bear to think them? I won’t give him that power over me. Not when he’s thrown it back in my face at every opportunity.
Cold wind tears at my skin and makes my eyes sting. Of course, Kel stands perfectly still and unaffected, as if this is nothing but a little breeze to him. And why not? He was probably birthed in the middle of a damned blizzard.
I turn in a circle, unable to look at him. All around, there are briars, frozen in place, cracked ice frosted over each thorn. Their positions appear pained, outstretched and jagged. They’d been created to attack, to harm. And they’ve been stuck that way ever since.
“Why did you bring me here, Cas? What more is there to say?”
“I can’t take it anymore. You treat me like a person one moment and then as some interloper in your life the next. I get it. You’re angry. But I didn’t kill your uncle, Kel. And I didn’t know about the underfae. I’m sorry you got hurt, but this time at least, it wasn’t my fault.”
Kel turns away and starts walking. “Just stop.”
No, no, no, I can’t. I won’t. I fling myself through the storm, chasing after him. “It’s not a trick. I didn’taskto be Rosalina’smate. When I first realized, I felt such pity for her, to be tethered to someone like me, that I did the only logical thing. I brought her to you, Kel. I dropped her at Castletree.”
“Stop,” he growls, moving faster now.
“Because even if you never cared for me, you’d care for her. Do you understand how excruciating that was, to know it in every fiber of me? And worse, I couldn’t hate her! Why couldn’t I hate her for it?” My eyes feel frozen open, staring at his back, my tears frosting on my cheeks as soon as they fall. “I suppose the same way it was beyond me to hate you. Wouldn’t that have been easier? Damn you, Kel. Damn the scars you carved on me.”
“Stop it!” he roars and turns to me. “What scars? You were the one who haunted me! Dawn to dusk, in dreams and daylight! You never left!”
“How could I? How could I leave?” I collapse to my knees, raking my nails across the icy ground.
Kel shakes his head, eyes squeezing shut. “I tried so damn hard with you, Cas. I let you into my home. Shared things with you I have still never told anyone else. I trusted you?—”
A choked laugh escapes me. “Don’t fool yourself. You never trusted me. Not fully. I was always some dark, wicked thing to you.” My eyes try to find his gaze through the growing storm. “I loved you above all else, and you never trusted me. How could I ever trust myself? Trust myself to be good? Trust myself that I didn’t have to be the darkness I was created for?” I touch a hand over my heart, as if I could pull it out of my chest and prove to myself it beats the same as his. That it isn’t infected and writhing with flame. “There was no light until Rosalina came to the Vale. Now, Ifeelit, reminding me at every moment there is something good within me, even if it all belongs to her. But you still don’t trust me that it’s there or that I’ll do everything in my power to keep it safe.”
“You still don’t understand, do you?” He shakes his head. “You strut around, thinking you’re so much smarter than everyone, but you’ve always been stupid, Cas. Or maybe you’re in denial. Because you were the one who didn’t trust me.”
“What?” I find his gaze, his eyes like pits of blue fire.
“You were the one who needed a bargain to believe I loved you!”
“Of course I did. Why should I have believed otherwise? You were the hero of the realms. The courageous and beloved Keldarion, running around with your knight in shining armor and the other simpering princes. Your soldiers would have died for you! The people kissed the ground you walked on. I was the outsider. The exile. How could youpossiblychoose me over everything else?”
Kel kneads the bridge of his nose. “Nothing was ever enough for you. Not even this cursed bargain.”
“Maybe it would have been if Winter hadn’t invaded Cryptgarden?—”
“I never would have ordered my army to attack your home. Youmustknow that.”
