Jesstin couldn’t let her leave believing this. He had to correct the misunderstanding. It felt somehow worse than what he’d done to her brother.
But could there be a cleaner break than the one she’d just unknowingly offered?
“I told you who I was,” he said, the calmest he’d been since she’d shown up. The ground made a subtle shift. He was dizzy. Weak. But it was almost over. “That’s all I can say, Elloven. I told you.”
A hazy look crossed her reddened face. “I guess this is my fault then? For believing you were more?”
“That’s not?—”
“You’ve said enough. You’ve done enough. I wish you’d left me dead.” Her head shook wildly. “No, I wish we’d never met. I wish you’d never known my brother. I wish... I wish you had never been born, so I don’t have to live with knowing that even for this I couldn’t bring myself to kill you!”
“You still can.” He held his palms up. “I won’t fight you.”
“No. No. The greatest restraint... I have ever shown... in my entire life... is right now.” She enunciated each syllable with unquenchable anger. Her eyes couldn’t hide her pain, which ran even deeper. “But death would be a mercy. You showed none to my brother; I offer you none now. You were right all along, Jesstin. You’re no better than either of your fathers, than Castien. You may even be worse, because they never pretended to be anything other than what they were.”
She was gone in the next breath. The last he saw of her was her loose golden hair disappearing between two trees as she flew from his life.
Her rebuke had only been the eye of the hurricane. The absence of her carved a deeper scar, and the void she left sent him to his knees.
“That was a hard thing you did,” Gennady said.
Jesstin slumped as a great weight left him. He’d never been more glad to see his old friend, nor more miserable. “How long have you been there?”
“How did you learn the truth, Jess? About that night?”
“It was shown to me.” Jesstin spread his palms to the moist earth. He tried to breathe, but she’d taken the air with her. “In the Infinitum.”
“Must’ve been a right shock.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jesstin pleaded.
“You threw me across the damn room while I was trying?—”
“Why did you never tell me what Sestinn and Castien were doing? Did you think...” He paused for breath. “You were protecting me?”
Gennady lowered to a crouch. “The truth, Jess? Yeah, I figured you’d kill them both, and maybe you’d get caught. But that wasn’t really what stopped me from telling you. You’d been carrying the burden of your father’s and brother’s sins so long, more than even you realized. I knew if you’d seen... heard the things I had, you’d never be able to set them down. And the weight of those sins would eventually destroy you.”
“So you thought it was better for me to remain ignorant while they terrorized women? Children?”
“I hoped I could fix it all on my own, so my best mate would break free of the past and finally live.”
Jesstin cackled. Tears slipped down his cheeks and into the corners of his mouth. “And yet.”
“But I was at least half wrong, wasn’t I? Because you didn’t kill them. You continued my work instead.”
“What do you want me to say, Gen?”
“Why didn’t you show her this side of you tonight?”
“I showed her what she needed to see.”
“Why, Jess?”
“You know why.” Jesstin’s fists clenched in the mud. He needed to destroy something from the inside out, to pummel and pulverize something, anything, and eviscerate it until the damage drowned out everything else.
“She was always going to leave when she found out,” Gennady said. “But if she deserved the truth, she deserved the full truth, which means being honest about more than what happened. It means being honest about how you became the man I’m looking at now, and that story is as much hers.”
“If I’d done that, she might have stayed, forgiven me. You don’t want that for her. You can’t.”
