Chapter Fifty-Three
Stellen
My reckoning has come. As I knew it would.
I knew what I was doing bringing Thyra here, where her father is entombed. I knew it would shatter the shields she’s built around her heart.
Her fists ball against my chest. “Antony was on his knees,” she cries, her head tipped back, the Lethian armor reacting to her voice, silver threads sliding up the side of her neck and into her hair, pinpricks appearing beneath her training suit, threatening to burst outward. “Why did you kill him?”
I could tell her what she already knows: Antony and I were enemies before we were born. That fate was always going to bring us together in a battle to the death.
That if, by some small sliver of chance, he survived the killing blow…
Fate will force us to fight again.
We’re destined to kill each other.
It will never be any different.
To be truly cruel, truly manipulative, I coulduse this moment to my advantage. I could feign remorse and utter soothing words of sorrow for my actions.
Instead, I answer with the truth. A truth that will hurt her more than my silence ever could.
“Because it was clear to me that he loved you.”
Her lips part, a horrified inhalation before her wail breaks across me, raking through my hearing with all the violence I deserve.
Still, I continue to hurt her. “Only death would keep him from you.”
She shoves herself away from me, struggling out of my hold, stumbling to her feet.
I let her go, remaining where I am on the floor, my arms heavy at my sides.
Furious breaths drag into her chest as she paces opposite me, her gaze scraping across my face with all the loathing I deserve.
The soft sound of tears falling down her cheeks cleaves at my chest.
But already, she’s trying to regulate her breathing. Already, she’s trying to control her emotions. I can hear it in her heartbeats and her inhalations. She’s determined to mend her shields as if they were a cracked door and her tears were the resin that would bind the pieces back together.
I can’t let her do that.
For once, not because I’m heartless, but because there was a time when I wasn’t.
I know the power of grief.
It consumed me and from it came a horror I can never undo.
Thyra’s pain must not thrive. Her grief must not overcome her as mine once did.
She must feel it and release it. Even if she hurts me in the process.
I rise to my feet, harden my features, and fill my voice with unfeeling ice. “If you need to take your rage out on me, Thyra, do it now. If you need to scream, do it now. If you need to hate me, then hate me.”
She takes a step away from me, her heartbeats and breathing and sheer fucking force of will telling me that still, she fights for control.
I prowl toward her, injecting as much cruelty as I can into my snarl. “If I could go back, I’d kill him again. I’d take off his head, cleave him to pieces, and leave his poisoned flesh to rot. I don’t regret it, Thyra. Not for a heartbeat.”
Despite all my omissions, this is the first lie I’ve spoken to her.
