And it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.
Tears drip from my chin, and I place my hand over his heart. It drums madly beneath his warm skin as I whisper, “I love you, too. What the hell are we going to do?”
He sputters out a ragged laugh, then looks away. “You will be queen, and I will … deal with it.”
When his gaze returns, it’s so raw and desperate that all I want to do is fling myself into his lap, kiss him a thousand times, and tell him I’d choose him always. Forever. In either world.
“What doyouwant, Charlotte?”
I sit up straighter. It’s a question no one save Granny Maggie has ever asked me.
WhatdoI want?
I have no good options, not a single one where no one gets hurt. Let’s say Lachlan and I stay here in the human realm. I let the ring fall off and forget all about him and my time in the Otherworld. How long would it take him to convince me what weare to each other? There is a very real risk that he would literally die trying. Not to mention, where does that leave the celestial kingdom?
“I … I want to do the right thing. I will make Desmond king.”
“And after?” He squeezes my hand, clinging. “I could stay in his service. He’d be ecstatic. We wouldn’t … We don’t have to end. It could be our secret.”
I bite my lip, sending my cloudy vision skyward. It’ssotempting.
But I remember what Garred said. About Lachlan giving too much and never asking for anything in return.
“I cannot”—my chest is fracturing, my heart spilling through the cracks; I swallow—“cannot do that to you. I won’t.”
“I don’t want anyone else.” He pushes in closer, kneeling between my spread legs, gripping my hand and clutching my face like he’ll die if he lets go. “You think you’d be doing me a favor by setting me loose, but I tell you, it will kill me. I’d rather suffer seeing you in his arms in public, knowing you were mine behind closed doors, than lose you completely.”
It’s the same arrangement George offered me. Which is why I know, deep in Lachlan’s and my mirrored souls, that it would chip away at him until nothing but misery and emptiness remained.
“You are the best man I’ve ever known.” I curl my fingers around his palm, lower his hand from my face. “You deserve to be loved out loud, Lachlan.”
He tilts his head, lips parting to expose the tips of his fangs, and more than anything he looks confused. Like he’s taking me apart in his mind. Reconfiguring me. He knows I’m right. But it is unbearable to watch him dismantle his dream of us in real time.
He rubs a palm over his mouth, then stands and holds it out to me. “I understand.”
“As soon as we return—” My voice splinters. I just need to get through this request without breaking. “As soon as we return, I’d like you to dissolve thediamrhán.Please.”
He bows stiffly. “As you wish, Your Majesty.”
Chivalrous to the end. Chivalrous to a fault.
I want to crumble into a million pieces. Let the moths scatter me across the soil.
The ring burns my flesh, the crossed arrows glowing bright. Sabre’s proposal.
Our time is officially over.
I grasp the hand of my friend, my knight, the love of my life in a kinder version of this faerie tale, and we’re whisked back to the Otherworld.
So that I may crown a king.
Chapter
Fifty-One
The Sanctuary of the Eternal Mother is carved into a peak of the Brumalt mountains and overlooks the Eldergrove, the sacred forest where the Wild Hunt will take place.
The sanctuary, the mountains, and the forest abound with ancient magic, like the source of all power in the celestial Otherworld flows within the stone and roots and soil.
