“I’m fine,” he says.
I nod slowly and gaze over at the white orbs—the souls… or whatever they are—floating around me. I want to assure Torin that Conquest and that man were wrong, but I can’t get the words to come out. Instead, I feel like I’m being forced to face the atrocities I’ve done while standing in front of the very person I subjected to hell.
The barrier flickers before it goes down. I see people rushing toward us, but I don’t even want to face them. The second Torin’s attention is drawn to them, I slip away into an alley that I slowly stagger down. Everything hurts. My hands hurt, my legs hurt. My head hurts.
But more than anything, that knot of anxiety deep in my stomach hurts.
I can’t breathe. Do I evenneedto breathe? Am I really not even human? No… I’m a monster. I’m the reason Torin suffered, got hurt, and was forced to bury everyone he ever knew or loved.
How can he feel anything toward me but resentment? Hatred?
How could I feel anything but guilt?
I stumble and drop to my knees while I struggle to breathe. My hands are shaking so much that when I try to push myself up, my arms collapse under me and I fall forward, hitting down on my shoulder. Shakily, I reach out to lift myself back up, but part of me doesn’t even want to move. I want to hide away here and suffer. Most of all, I want to wake up having forgotten everything.
Chapter Thirty-One
Torin
“The barrier broke. We couldn’t keep it active any longer. Where is the horseman?” Imani asks as she runs toward me. Her exhaustion is plain to see. She’s probably never created a barrier of such magnitude, let alone kept it active for so long. And with her strength, she likely bore the brunt of it.
“He’s gone,” I say, but my attention is on Riley… or, to be more exact, where Riley went.
I don’t have to search hard; the orbs are steadily floating toward an alley he must have gone through.
My hand tightens on Quill’s mane before I walk toward the alley, my head a mess.
Riley is the horseman who killed everyone I loved? Everyone I cared for?
He doesn’t look like the horseman I fought… but as his magic has begun to settle and even out, I’ve felt hints of it.
I did last night in bed.
And I definitely did during the fight.
I turn the corner and see Riley on the ground, sending fear through me. What if he got hurt and I didn’t realize it? What if the magic was too much for his body?
Letting go of Quill, I rush forward and discover that he’s conscious, just curling in on himself.
“Riley!” I shout as I drop down beside him and draw him into my arms. “Riley. Hey…”
He pushes back from me, and for an instant, I wonder if that magic has consumed him again, but I see the tears and the horror on his face. “Don’t touch me. I don’t deserve any kindness from you.”
I ignore him and gather him into my arms. He fights against me, but his body is weak and he ends up sinking into me while I cradle him.
“How can you show me an ounce of kindness?” he whispers. “How can you not hate me?”
I pull him closer and gently tilt his chin up. “Do you remember killing them?”
His face shows his pain. “No. Of course not.”
“Then why do you blame yourself for it? I killed the horseman who attacked my land. My guess is that the horsemen are beings that cannot fully die. They are part of the prophecy for the end of all worlds, after all. They likely reincarnate when ‘killed.’ You can’t blame yourself for something that happened in the past that you don’t even recall. It would be like you hating Mickey for something his father did. It wasn’t you, my sweet Riley. You may share the same powers… you may be a reincarnation of him, but it was not you. I’m sorry if I made you worry. My mind was just reeling and trying to focus on the fight, so I forced myself to cut off all thoughts but killing that man. I could not spare any.”
I draw him in tighter and squeeze him to me. “Riley, you are so very special to me. You are everything I love. You are my world. We will get through this together, okay?”
Riley seems uncertain but he does allow me to continue holding him.
I know he fears that the relationship between us has changed, but I know that the person in my arms is not the man I’ve spent nearly two hundred years hating. Riley is kind and selfless, but that’s partly why it’ll be so hard for him to process what happened in a life that was long before this one.
