Sybilla stepped to the opposite side of the bed as we both avoided being the first to speak.
Sighing, I cursed myself for not visiting more often. My heart beat faster, and my cheeks heated at the prospect of him lifting onto those perfectly sculpted forearms before rising.Would his gaze find mine or hers first?
I could count on two hands how many times I’d walked into this room in the last five years. Usually, it took Lark convincing me to come sit with her as she read, like we used to when she was a girl.
Sybilla finally cut the silence. “A kiss to this old thing and to his lips. That is all?”
I knotted my fingers together in front of me and nodded. The book lay open beside Emmerick’s hip. Sybilla sat next to him, gazing down at the stone.
She scrunched her nose. “It feels so intrusive.”
“Should it wake him, he will forgive you. Plus, it isn’t like you haven’t kissed him plenty.”
I ignored the pinch of jealousy tightening in my chest; this was no time for such things. I’d never been one to get possessive before. My brow furrowed.
Sybilla lifted the stone to her mouth and kissed just above the sun emblem. Then she hesitated.
“Anytime now,” I teased.
She offered me a mock glare before leaning over and placing a polite peck on Emmerick’s lips. My stomach lurched. I nearly reached out to pull her away. Where hadthatunfamiliar sentiment come from?
Scolding myself for the girlish envy, I sat on the other side of the bed, watching for signs of waking—a flutter of lashes, a change in breathing… anything.
“Wake up,” I whispered. Sybilla reached across him to take my hand.
He looked as blissfully unaware of our presence as when we’d entered the room.
I leaned closer, imagining his eyes opening.
They didn’t.
My heart shattered just as it had that night when Lark accidentally cut off my communication with him.
“El...”
I realized I had been holding my breath only when Sybilla spoke.
“I wanted badly for it to work, too.” She offered me the stone. When it landed in my palm, the weight of its implications made me slouch. He would stay cursed. I’d lost him too.
Letting out a defeated sigh, I shook my head. “Can I have a moment? Alone.”
I didn’t want her to see me break. My lungs burned for relief; my optimism had crashed so soon after being built.
She patted my hand before rising. “Of course. I need to return to the Sahlms before Krait gets nervous. You’ll be alright?”
“I always am,” I replied dully.
She narrowed her gaze at me from the door.
Before exiting, she turned and said, “I may have been his ‘truest of heart’ at one point... it doesn’t mean that could not have changed. Stop blaming yourself. I can feel it. You’ve failed no one, El.”
Her words crushed me. Maybe it had been Firose—his Source Match. If his heart longed for hers, then we held no chance of waking him. When the door’s hinges creaked closed, I stared down at the useless stone in my palm.
“Please. Come back to me, puppy,” I whispered.
Unable to sit there and witness his stillness any longer, I rose and made to leave.
“You.”My meddling niece’s assumption stirred a thought.
