Closer now. A voice I knew once, in another life, with another me.
I squeeze my eyes shut against the world, against the sound, againsthim...willing myself into the void.
“Arden!” His voice slides through me like honey and I let out a moan as hard hands seize me by the shoulders and lift me, pull me up from my icy shroud. My head lolls weakly on my shoulders. I cry out at the pressure on my wounded arm, my eyes flying open to confront the moon-bathed night.
“Arden! Are you hurt? Sick?”
Tage fills my vision. Beautiful Tage with eyes like black prisms and the velvet touch and the silky hair and the lips. The lips I kissed. The lips that make me forget everything, all the bad things, all the things that should and should not be.
But not anymore.
Even those lips can’t make me forget.
He pulls back his hand from my injured arm. “You’re bleeding.”
“It’s not...serious.” I don’t know if that’s true, but I know it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters anymore.
He makes a tsking sound that seems to convey his doubt. “Viggo will fix you right up.”
“No,” I murmur.
I can’t go back there. Now more than ever, I can’t be with him. I can’t be with any of them.
Warm fingers brush my cheek gently, poking through my numbness. “Arden.” He says my name so kindly, so tenderly.
“No,” I whimper, pushing his hand off my cheek and taking an unsteady step back from him. I don’t deserve tenderness.
“I’ve been out of my mind with worry.” He touches the side of my hair—as though he can’tnottouch me. I resist leaning into the cup of his palm. “Do you know what could have happened to you out here?”
It can’t be worse than the reality of what already happened.
The bitter wind whips the dark strands of his hair, and I resist the urge to push those strands back from his face. To touch him. To feel him. “Do you know all the terrible things that lurk out in these mountains?”
“Yes,” I burst out. “Me! I’m the terrible thing!”
He frowns, his hand falling away from my hair. “What are you talking about? No, you’re not. You’re—”
“I am!” I cry, staggering back from his arms. He doesn’t follow me, already knowing, already sensing that I’m in earnest and that there is something very,verywrong. I hold out a hand as though I might ward him off should he want to touch me again.
“Arden, you’re not—”
“You should have listened to the others and ended me in the village.”
He flinches.
If he’d known the truth about me, then he would have. It’s what he will want to do when he learns the truth about me now. It’s no less than what I deserve after all the pain and grief I put my family through. After I stood by and let Ulrika die...after Linnea. Lives ruined. Because of me.
I’ll tell him, of course. Even if I could bring myself to lie to him, to Tage, to the one who has come to mean so much to me in this desert of my life, I could not. I would not lie about this. I am the monster. I told myself dragons were the things to be feared, but all along it’s been me.
“What are you even saying? Did you hit your head? Are you hurt?” His gaze sweeps over me in the dusky air.
If it could only be as simple as a head injury. I take a breath. “I’m a witch.”
He stares. Not even a blink. No reaction at all.
“Did you hear me?” I press, feeling the sharp edge of hysteria biting into me. “I am a witch.”
“Impossible.”
