Jesstin wrenched out of her hold, more roughly than he’d intended. His eyes held hers long enough to read the anguish, the panic. It was a look that said everything. She was reliving the past months and second-guessing every moment of them, wondering if his feelings had changed or if he’d played her. He was so tempted to go with that, to break her heart the old-fashioned way and be done with it, but he hadn’t chosen the truth to weasel out of it now. “I don’t want your apology, Elloven.”
“You’re not yourself. I understand. I’m not either. I don’t even know what I’m feeling right now. We’ve just been through hell.” Her timorous, climbing pitch was heartrending. “Maybe you should rest, and we’ll talk more after?—”
“Elloven, I am exactly who I’ve always been!” Jesstin shouted.
She fell back a step, stunned into silence.
His heart battered his chest wall like a boat crashing against a pier in a storm. He took a breath to right himself, to take a step back and try again. “The devil was always in me, but you chose to see something that wasn’t there.”
She folded her hands over her mouth. “How am I supposed to know what’s right with you? You traveled to the netherworld for me, resurrected me, told me you love me. Made love to me, Jesstin. You chose to do those things.”
“I didn’t choose to love you.” Jesstin sputtered a rueful laugh. “That happened against my better judgment.”
“Your... what?” Her mouth fell wide. Color slowly left her stunned face. “What are you saying?”
What was he saying? His confession would have been more than enough to clear the lie between them.
She needs to walk away with zero doubts about the monster I am.
“You’d be clawing my face to take back your apology if you knew what I’d been holding back.” Spittle flew as his courage ramped. “You once said that when you got what you needed in Rivenholde, you’d search for Gennady’s killer yourself.”
She recoiled in a snap. “Do you... Wait, you know who killed him! He did tell you!”
Jesstin clapped a hand flat against his chest. “Oh, I know who killed him, Elloven, I’ve always known, and now you do too, because you’re fucking looking at him.”
Elloven was so still, she became one with the swamp.
Jesstin dragged his tongue across his teeth. It felt good to get the words out, but he had to slow down. Now. He remembered what he’d told himself in the Infinitum, that the truth would hurt her, but if she knew how loved she was, she’d find something better. All he wanted was for her to know she was worthy of love.
He sighed and tried to focus on the facts, instead of the carriage in his chest heading for a cliff. “He was acting strange for months, so I followed him one night. Found him with this girl, thirteen. A child. She was a bastard of either Castien or Sestinn—I don’t know which—and she wasn’t the only one either. There were others, and Gen found out and decided he wanted to help them. He rescued them, cleaned them up, found them homes. Didn’t tell me about any of this. All I knew was he wasn’t himself, and he wouldn’t tell me why. So I followed him, and when I... I saw that girl, lying dead, I snapped. I threw him across the room. He hit the edge of a table, and his neck broke. He died instantly. He was trying to explain, but I didn’t give him a chance. I was so disgusted I didn’t even want to hear what he had to say.” He laughed bitterly. “Why would I? It’s something an honorable man would do, like your brother.”
Elloven’s blinks slowed. Her eyes fluttered up and toward him as she seemed to return to herself. “My mother...” She sounded far older, and it wasn’t only her voice that quaked; it was her. The earth beneath her feet. The trees bowed to a wind that had not existed moments ago. “She told me... She said... ‘you will learn something about Jesstin that will bid you forsake him, a great treachery that will send you to your knees.’” Her hand bunched around her collar, winding the fabric tight. “She knew. My—” Elloven dry-heaved.
“And she sent you away with me anyway.” So Esmeray had known all along. She’d known and had still invited him for tea, had bid him rescue her daughter instead of asking the man who was already there and eager to do it. For all Taven’s offenses, he hadn’t murdered her son. “Go on then, Elloven. Whip up a storm to take me. Open the ground beneath my feet. Have your justice. It’s what you want to do. It’s what you should do. It’s what I deserve.” The wind quickened. He staggered as a root from a nearby tree erupted from the dirt. He understood this had been his intention all along. That he should die by her hand was poetic. It was right. “Do you need me to say it again? I killed Gennady. I murdered him without a second thought. And I kept it from you because I was too fucking selfish, too fucking in love with you to be a man and come clean.”
Elloven screeched high enough to shatter glass, and the upheaval came to a slamming halt. Her next breath was clogged with pain.
He threw his arms wide in challenge. “You’re not going to beg me to say I’m lying, say it’s not true?”
“I have never seen such cruelty from you. Thoughtlessness, but this...” She curved away and swiped at her tears. “So much about your behavior never made sense until now. Bloody hell, I’m going to spend the rest of my life looking back on these months and wondering how I could be so blind. How I could let a man... let you...” She bowed over in a bitter laugh. “I convinced myself you loved me.”
“I did.” Steady. “I do.”
“Is that why you came for me?” Elloven moaned into her fist and stared into the forest before she spoke again. “You really hated Gen so much that you needed to ruin me too?”
Dread turned his bones to ice. That wasn’t what he’d meant at all. It was precisely what he didn’t want her to take away, because the only promise still keeping him going at all was that even with the pain and the betrayal he’d leave her with, she’d remember the love, too, and know there was more love waiting for her. Better love.
“No, Elloven, that’s exactly what I didn’t want and why I kept pushing you away, why I tried so hard not to care about you.” He ached to claw back the confession, to take her in his arms and let her feel what he could no longer say, but the damage was done. Once more, he had hurt her beyond repair, but this time there’d be no going back.
“You tried so hard.” She tossed a rueful laugh at the sky. “Unbelievable.”
“I don’t expect you to believe it, but it’s the truth. I won’t lie to you anymore, and I won’t lie to myself.”
“Oh, how noble of you, Jesstin. Do you feel better now?”
“No!” He suppressed a pained grunt. “I never wanted to hurt you, Elloven. I never...”
“Never what?” Elloven demanded as she turned back.
