“Careful, moonflower.” His lips twitched at the corners.
“Is that the best you can come up with? A flower?” I gripped the hilt tighter when my muscles tensed.
The gleam in his eyes blazed as our weapons met over and over again.
My boots slipped on the gravel as his sword crashed into mine, landing me on my back.
Fyn lunged, locking our blades above my chest. “Are you happy now?”
“Incandescently,” I said.
His breath was suffocating as he leaned over me. “We’re done.” Something shifted in his gaze.
I pushed myself up as heat climbed my back.
He truly didn’t think I could do it—any of it—the sword, the pact with the prince, the journey. It was all a joke to him.
“Now that you’ve gotten over whatever that was, can we get back on the road?” he asked, sliding his sword back into the sheath.
“Whatever that was?” Anger crawled through me until I couldn’t stifle it. “You’ll never take me seriously.”
He looked at the blade that I still held in front of me. “Ashlyn?—”
“I was taken from my world with no choice of going back.” My grip tightened on my sword. “You took me because my sister commanded it.” There was no time to think it over—to challenge any of it. “I live in a dark room that was meant for papers. These are Aelira’s clothes.”
Maybe I could have stayed in the human realm and remained unscathed. We would never know.
Once I was in Nythrel, they let me think it was my choice to stay. I said I wanted it because I feared the future my brother had decided for me.
But it was never my choice at all.
“Ashlyn—”
“I know Lioran had no intention of letting me return. That he and my sister let me believe it was my choice. I’ve known it all along.” Cora told me everything that had been decided for me when they held council.
“Does Aelira know that you know?” he asked.
It changed nothing. “Why would I tell her?” My brother had just used me as a pawn to steal my sister from the fae. “My sister was trying to protect me.” I wouldn’t condemn her for it.
He stared at me like he couldn’t speak as I slid my sword back into its sheath. Fyn was never speechless.
“I just wanted something that was mine. But I should have known… what you think of me. What you’ve always thought of me.”
It mattered to me too much—what others thought of me—what he thought of me.
I didn’t want it to.
He stepped closer to me. “Don’t do this.”
“Do what?” My eyes stung. “Get you to admit what you’ve always thought of me?”
“Somewhere beyond all your stubbornness, you know what I’ve always thought of you. You just absolutely refuse to believe it.”
My anger fueled me with energy I shouldn’t have had. “It doesn’t matter.” I darted toward Ivy, pulling myself up in the saddle.
“Ashlyn, please.” Hearing him say my name made me recoil further inside myself.
“Stop saying my name,” I scolded him as I took off.
