We sleep apart.
Chapter Nineteen
Shesitshuddledbythe fire when I return, carefully polishing her necklace. Firelight dances in her eyes, teeth pressed into her lower lip.
A throbbing ache in my heart steals my breath.
“Mayah.”
Beautiful blue eyes fix on me. She smiles, and the ache grows stronger.
“We—we can’t go to Arbinj.”
Her brow furrows, necklace set aside.
“It’s not safe. They’ll hurt you, and I—I won’t be able to stop them.”
“I don’t understand.” A crease etches between her brows, and my hand wavers with the urge to smooth it away.
“Come with me to Volca. My mother’s homeland.” Desperation threads every syllable. “We’ll leave this realm, find somewhere else. Somewhere safe.”
“What about the war? My father? My people? I can’t just leave them. They need me.”
Shame coats my tongue. I don’t care about any of those things—not my people, not my kingdom, not my father. Nothing matters except the woman before me. The woman I’ve fallen in love with. The woman who reached into my chest, found my withered heart, and set it beating again.
“Mayah, please.” I fall to my knees, begging. “Faramir, he’s—he’s not right. He’ll hurt you. In so many ways. Please. Come with me. I can’t let you marry him. He’s a monster.”
Her face freezes as the words pass through my lips.
Then, it morphs into a look of utter disgust. Lip curled, eyes narrowed. Warm blue eyes frost over with hatred.
Where is the woman I love?
“Monster?” she hisses. Her face is unrecognizable in its fury. “Did Faramir murder my friends?”
No. No, no, no.
“Did he spend a decadekilling my people?”
No, but—
“Did he tie me up until my wrists bled? Did he forcibly hold me down in the snow?”
Mayah, no, I love—
“The only monster I see isyou.”
I haven’t taken a full breath for days, not since that wretched dream stole my sleep and my peace. Even still, the desire to whisk her away burns hot in my chest.
A few times, I’ve almost said it.
Come with me. I can’t let you marry him.
But the words never pass my cowardly lips.
Her cold, disdainful face crashes through my mind. The pointed cruelty of her words. The fear that my nightmare will become a reality.
So I said nothing. Did nothing.
