My eyes burned.
I didn’t want to believe him. I wanted to tell him it was a pretty story. I wanted to shove it back at him.
And yet I believed him.
Not because he couldn’t lie, but because it aligned with what I knew, like a constellation mapping out his shape in the sky.
Everything between us had felt real. His outrage on my behalf. His attempts to give me something bright in the bleak grey of my existence. His kindness when I’d been so lost.
Truth be told, I’d known those things were real. Always.
But I’d been in denial, drowning myself in it.
Because if that was all real—if what he’d told me was true… Well, I’d had something precious and beautiful, hadn’t I?
And I’d lost it.
They might say it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
But they were full of shit.
I had to drag my burning eyes away, pretending to scan the countryside for danger.
The only danger was here. Bastian. The fae who had been the biggest danger to me from the instant I’d met him.
Oh, he was a blade all right. A blade to cut my heart out.
“Why did you never come to me for help?” He said it softly, barely disturbing the still air, as though he was afraid of the answer.
Where did I start with a question like that? “I’m not sure it crossed my mind.” There had never been anyone for me to go to before. I wasn’t sure I even knew how to ask. “If I’d told you that I worked for the queen’s spymaster—or at least thought I did, it would’ve been treason. And I had enough crimes.”
“You could’ve told me. I’d have kept you safe.” He frowned down at his hands. “You had a choice.”
“And yet you judge me for something that wasn’t my choice?”
He twitched, eyes widening at me, and I knew he understood I meant my marriage. The muscle in his jaw flexed, and his neck corded.
“I didn’t want it, Bastian. I never wanted it.” Maybe it was my own guilt talking.
His lips paled as he pressed them together. Under this grey sky, it was like he too was becoming grey, like a ghost. His hair could’ve been the dark charcoal left after a fire. The scar cutting through his lips, silvery. His eyes, moonlight.
I’d have chosen him. If anyone had given me the choice. Hells, no one had and yet I’d still tried to. At that party, I’d tried to choose him.
Yet he looked furious at me for it.
“You fucking hypocrite.” It burst out of me. I didn’t mean to, and yet the words kept spilling—if I kept silent, it would be tears spilling in their place. “You talk so much about choice, and yet you only gave me an abridged one. Was it really a choice, when I didn’t know what you were doing? Was it a choice when I didn’t know you were using me?”
“You were using me too,” he rasped.
“Yes, but I never gave you grand speeches about how you deserved more and always had a choice. And”—my words cracked—“and I stopped using you. I tried to get out of the situation.” My chin trembled, because some foolish part of me had started believing his speeches.
Maybe I did deserve better. But if that was true, then I also deserved better than what he’d given me.
“You kept going to the bitter end.”
He worked his jaw side to side before he spoke. “This hasn’t ended yet.”
“Hasn’t it?” I rubbed my chest where my heart felt as raw as the edge to his voice. “I’m bound to you by some horrible accident of magic. But understand, that doesn’t mean I choose to be in Elfhame… to be with you. I don’t have the luxury—the power of that choice. Yet again.” I gave a bitter laugh, but there was no strength behind it.
After several minutes, he bowed his head. “I’m sorry.”
I made a low sound of acknowledgement, but I didn’t trust my voice to hold together. I’d already surreptitiously swiped away a tear that chilled my cheek.
We rode on in quiet for a long while, the sun setting ahead. Even that was muted by the blanketing cloud—a dull grey sunset.
Still, I felt better for speaking, like a wound had been purged of rot, leaving it clear to heal. At my side, Bastian was no longer wound up so tight, either, and the furrow of his brow was thoughtful rather than angry.
As if the sky had also relaxed its grip, it unleashed a torrent so sudden and absolute, I could barely see beyond my stag’s antlers.
I gasped as the chill rain snaked under my collar and down my back. Bastian bared his teeth, nose wrinkling like he could scare off the rain with a snarl.
“Come,” he shouted over the gushing deluge, and urged his stag into a canter. “There are caves in the foothills. We’ll make up the time tomorrow.”
I followed him off the path, barely daring to blink away the stinging rain in case I lost sight of him. A branch from a tree I didn’t even spot scraped my cheek, but I kept on his stag’s tail.
By the time we reached the great crack in the side of a granite rock face, I was drenched to my underwear—possibly to my soul. We rushed inside, dragging the deer, who didn’t seem so sure about the narrow passage. But it soon opened up to a space plenty big enough for the four of us.
Our panting breaths filled the cave as the frigid air bit through our wet clothes.
Water dripped from Bastian’s hair into his screwed up face, and a puddle formed at his feet. A particularly large droplet formed at the tip of his nose.
Maybe it was that, maybe it was the expression that I knew matched my own, but when I caught his eye, I laughed.
It started as a chuckle, but like the rain, it soon became a torrent.
And he laughed too.
I gave my body to it—a release after almost a month of uncertainty. He doubled over, as though the rain had washed away Business Bastian and the tense man I’d ridden out of the gate with.
Also…
“You look like a drowned rat,” I wheezed around my laughter, pointing at him, at the clothes stuck to his body and the hair plastered to his face.
He swept that hair back and cast an eye over me. “So do you. Albeit a very pretty rat.”
That only made me laugh harder. A few tears mingled with the rain on my face, but they were good tears. Gods, I hadn’t laughed this hard in…
I shook my head and wiped my cheeks as Bastian drew deep breaths, rubbing his belly. “I’m not used to working these muscles.”
I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Maybe you should introduce laughter into your exercise regime.”
“Maybe you should not argue with trees next time you ride.” He bent close and swiped a stick from my hair.
“I was saving that for later.” I snatched it off him, like he was trying to steal my most prized possession. “Firewood, you know.”
“Ah, yes, that damp twig will warm us right up.”
We chuckled. Not the slightly unhinged laugh of moments earlier, but something calmer that lit up Bastian’s eyes as they held mine.
“Look, Kat. About earlier…” He shook his head and removed a wet lock of hair from my cheek.
The sun must not have yet reached the horizon, because no magic raced between us, but the way his expression softened and his skin upon mine still stole my breath.