It didn’t matter how many times I fell. Each time I wound up bruised, I enjoyed the ache.
It was better than being numb.
Maybe Fyn knew it. He always seemed to name the things he shouldn’t.
I needed to find him. We would have one quiet conversation that would hopefully calm the rage that was building inside of me.
When Eva was long gone, I slammed my hand into the wall between us three times.
A single knock replied.
I peered out into the quiet hall. When a guard turned toward another at the end of the corridor, I took off in the opposite direction. Fyn’s door creaked open just before I reached the corner.
Each step I took I remembered every moment that still held me.
Fyn wouldn’t let me utter whatever stupid truth I would have said. I couldn’t even remember what I was going to say, but it didn’t make me fear it any less.
He was full of honor and loyalty.
He respected me fully.
As I turned the corner, I found a quiet alcove that held a single window. The stone wall was a welcome chill on my back as I looked up at the moon.
“The blue,” Fyn’s voice carried behind me. “It suits you.”
“Careful, Fyn. That almost sounded like a compliment.” I couldn’t handle him complimenting me.
“You didn’t choose what he wanted, did you?” A hint of mockery lingered in his voice, but when I turned to look at him, the lines around his eyes softened.
“It was my choice. This color was the one I wanted before I came here,” I said.
A flicker of a smile flashed on his face before it faded. “Promise me you will never stop choosing, Ashlyn.” He looked at me as if he feared someday I would. “Your passion illuminates you. It is everything that brings you to life.”
“And yet, for some, it is too much.” My brother condemned it. Maybe Soren hated it too. “Perhaps he will learn to navigate it.” I didn’t want to have this conversation with Fyn. We came here to discuss the starlight—to talk about what it was doing to me.
And instead of the starlight’s heat, I was feeling things I didn’t want to.
“Learning to would require choosing to.” He cleared his throat.
“He doesn’t have to.” That wasn’t a part of a royal marriage pact. “It’s the life I was meant to live.”
“So you will simply accept it?” He pressed his hands into the side of his neck as his chest swelled. “Just because you were raised for it doesn’t mean it is what’s best for you.”
“Marrying him would give me a path I could name.”
He stepped closer to me. “And what if you could have that life somewhere else? A different certainty?”
I clamped my hands tightly together in front of me until they throbbed. “The one that exists in Bailoc may be more terrifying than this.”
“What if that certainty existed in Nythrel?” he asked.
I couldn’t entertain whatever version of the future he implied. If I did, everything I sought when I came here would be gone.
“My mother once thought she could have a life in Nythrel. It took everything from her.”
“Your mother?” He repeated it as if he couldn’t have heard me correctly. “She chose love.”
Everyone in Nythrel knew the story. They knew she fell in love with a fae lord when she was married to my father.
