“I know.” His voice thinned.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ASHLYN
Amber morning light flooded the room.
I made it through the night.
I felt fine. I felt like me.
Fyn rose from the floor at the base of the bed. “You look almost normal in the morning light.”
“Almost normal is exactly what I’m going for.” My words broke through a long yawn.
Sunlight slipped in between the ivory curtains and heated my skin.
“I’m serious, your eyes seem as they were,” he said.
My heart thrummed as I let myself feel each breath—as I ran my fingers over my ears. “I’m fine.”
“You’ve decided to continue.” He held my gaze as his words grew heavier. “And nothing I can say to you will change that?”
My chest ached. Not from the starlight I almost destroyed myself with, but from the truth I now knew.
It couldn’t exist—I wouldn’t let it. WhateverI thought I felt would have to vanish. I couldn’t let my chance at returning to the human realm slip away from me.
I shook my head. “I have. I need to see if my future is there.”
His heavy exhale snapped through the silence. “I’ll step out so you may change. I will let my men know we will cross.”
“Fyn.” I waited for him to look back at me. “You don’t think I should go, do you?”
“You know the answer to that.” He stretched his arms behind his back. “I’m honoring your choice. I always will.”
He did. He always did. Acknowledging it somehow made it worse. My mind slowly drifted to the memory of his heartbeat.
I needed to forget it.
“If I don’t see it for myself, if I don’t at least consider it. I’ll regret it.” I’d never stop wondering what my life would be like there. I’d spent too many months feeling like I was disappearing.
Fyn’s hand hovered on the door before he slipped out into the hall.
The look on his face before he turned from me was etched into my memory as I braided back my hair. He had never looked that way at me before.
I tried to tuck the extra fabric of my fresh tunic into the leather bodice before I grabbed my bag and my sword.
A painful pull throbbed inside of me.
Fyn deserved to be free of me. Soon, he would be.
When I stepped into the hall, he went back into the room to change. Moments later, he stepped back out again. “Would you like to get checked out again before we leave?”
“It isn’t necessary.”
“Estlen it is then.” He clipped his sword into his belt. “Hana, the innkeeper, prepared breakfast for the road. Do you need anything else?”
I shook my head.
