A sharp pain stabbed through our bond before easing to a barely-there throb. Aspen didn’t even wince; he just nodded. Without our connection, I would’ve never known what that one word did to him.
“Goodnight,” he whispered, and shut the door.
I bowed my head and glared at the red carpet.
Why did I feel bad for him?
Scoffing, I turned toward my room. I was seconds away from grabbing my shadow-coated doorknob when I felt him—heard him.
He didn’t scream. He didn’t cry. He keened, as if mourning an unimaginable loss. The door muffled his grief, sealing it away from anyone but those standing in the hall. The pain sifting through our bond felt muted beside his heartbreaking noise.
My eyes stung as he continued. He sounded like me the first night back at the castle after I killedmy mother.
I dropped my hovering hand.
Don’t do it. Let him deal with his pain alone.
Maybe I should’ve. Maybe what he did to those other females and me was unforgivable, and he deserved to pay the price for his actions. But he was as much a victim as me, and as I listened to his soul-deep brokenness, I turned around and walked into his rooms.
I stepped into the bedroom and found him in a crumpled ball on the red rug halfway to his bed. He held his head in his hands as he hunched over his knees, shaking. The noises shuddering from his chest ripped me in two. I crouched beside him.
“Aspen?” I murmured, lightly touching his shoulder.
He jerked and further hid his face. “Lucille, leave.”
“No.”
He laughed, the sound self-deprecating. “Please just leave.”
I sat down on the rug. If he wanted to talk, he could. If he wanted to scream or cry, I’d sit here and wait until he couldn’t anymore. Like Ronen had done for me.
“Lucille, you don’t understand. Go.”
“Then help me to.” Maybe if I understood, it’d help heal what he broke.
Fear slithered down our bond, along with an odd sense of teetering, as if he stood on the edge of a cliff, unsure whether to jump. After a moment, I felt him give, falling into a pit of emotion. An insurmountable ache hit me as he lifted his puffy, red face. I had to clench my fists to prevent myself from touching my chest—or his.
“I’m marooned without a family. A home. Friends. Allies.” He paused. The ache increased. “You. I’m known to the world as Prince of the Tenebrous Kingdom, who had a hand in slaughtering hundreds of angels, and even some humans. Oliver woke me from the Hell Rune…” His voice dropped to a whisper. “And I almost wished he hadn’t. Every day I fight the urge to take a dagger to my throat or provoke your cordistella into ending my life.”
Trauma lined his forehead and mouth. It traveled down his arms and into his shaking hands. The pain I felt from him moments ago was nothing compared to what swallowed him now.
Earlier, he hadn’t paled because he forgot I could feel his emotions.He had paled because he assumed his mental barrier was strong enough to keep me out. In reality, his emotions were so overwhelming they’d been leaking through.
“My mom gave her life for me too, Lucille. And it resulted in this?” He gestured to himself as he blinked back tears. “How do I live with myself?”
The last time I saw Aspen cry was when I lay dying on Michael’s butcher table. He had been so scared of losing me, terrified that I’d give up. I’d been ready to. After all the blood I lost, I wasn’t under any illusions that Aspen could save me. But he tried—fighting, crying, begging me to hold on. It hurt to watch. But this, seeing him fight against himself to continue living, was somehow worse.
Aside from my mom, he had been the only spark of joy in my life on Earth. He would never understand what he did for me then. It was that male, the one from the forest, that I feared losing. That male was the reason I was here and not in my room, letting him suffer.
Slowly, the entire time questioning my actions, I wrapped my arms around him. He stiffened and gripped my shoulders as if to push me away. A moment passed, and I considered letting go. Then he folded into me.
“How, sweetheart?” he begged, pressing his face into my neck and trembling in my arms.
I opened my mouth, about to tell him it wasn’t his fault, and stopped. The Hell Runes had controlled him. Lilith forced him to commit gruesome acts. Acts I would’ve never believed the male I met in the forest could do. And yet, when he captured me in Elora, he’d said horrible things to me that still echoed in my mind. In my dream-walks, he gave me my first amazing moments of pleasure, only for them to be puppeteered by Lilith.
Was that who I should blame for the hole in my heart? The dead Tenebrous Queen?
But it was his face, his hands, his voice.
