“I made a deal with the stars,” he breathed. “Last Christmas when the fight broke out at The Palace of Souls, Gabriel took me to the Caves of the Forgotten and he led me to a room where I made a deal with a star to save your life.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head as those words crept into my skull and took roots. “No.” I refused the truth of what he was saying to me because it made far too much sense.
“The bonds,” Darcy breathed as her hand landed on my shoulder and she moved up behind me, lending me support while the injustice of it all built in my veins, the reality, the fucking truth.
Darius was nodding even though I was shaking my head. “They showed me your death. Both of you. And they offered me a chance to save you, to twist fate and give us a shot at defeating my father. Every bond placed on us broken and a single year to prove I could have been a man worthy of your love, Roxy.”
“No,” Orion snarled.
“A year?” I gasped, my heart hammering as I realised how fucking close we were to that time coming to an end already.
“That’s why you were so angry when they went to The Palace of Flames,” Orion said in realisation, his voice cracking. “Because your time with her was being stolen?”
Darius nodded, but he didn’t look away from me, taking my face between his hands and willing me to understand this fucked up choice he’d made for me without even doing me the curtesy of letting me know about it.
“No time with you would ever have been enough, Roxy. You have to know that. A year, a lifetime, a fucking eternity would never be enough. But I couldn’t let you die. I had to make the choice. I had to-”
My fist snapped out and I punched him so hard that I was pretty sure something broke in my hand as a scream erupted from me that defied all logic or reason or understanding, and was instead filled with the pain and terror of knowing that I was so close to losing him already.
The only man I would ever love. The only one I ever wanted. The one I fucking needed with every fibre of my soul. And he’d lied to me about this. Let me waste months that I could have spent searching for a solution and leaving me with weeks to find one instead.
It was too much. Too fucking much.
“You didn’t have the right to make that choice for me,” I hissed, blood from his busted lip staining my knuckles as I backed up a step and he just stared at me with heartbreak in his eyes which I didn’t want to face because he was the one who had done this to us and it wasn’t fair for him to look at me like that.
“Roxy,” he began but I shook my head fiercely.
“No,” I snarled, all of my hurt and fury and pain over this fucking lie lashing at him within that single word with enough force to make him flinch.
I shook my head as I took another step back, looking at this man I thought I knew so well who lied so fucking easily to me like he was a stranger, because that was what this felt like. The actions of someone I didn’t even know. Or worse than that, the actions of the monster who had always been destined to destroy me in the end.
And with my heart breaking and soul shredding, so much anger burning through me that I couldn’t even bear to look at him, my wings snapped out and I took off into the sky, flying the fuck away from him and all of it, the fucking war, his fucking father and my goddamn heart which was ripping into a thousand pieces as tears spilled down my cheeks and were stolen by the freezing cold bite of the wind.
I stared at Darius, shocked into silence as fear made my lungs cease to work. Darcy headed after her sister, her wings bursting from her back as she chased her into the sky and I took a step towards Darius, but the Heirs got their first, surrounding him like a pack of Wolves and demanding answers. I couldn’t hear them though. I couldn’t hear anything but the ringing in my ears as I tried to process the fact that one of my best friends in the whole world had traded his life and was going to fucking die.
And the worst thing was, I should have known. I should have realised the bonds wouldn’t be broken for nothing. And deep down, maybe I had. Maybe I hadn’t pushed him on the subject because I knew there was a price and I couldn’t bear to know the truth of it. Or maybe I was just a shitty fucking friend who hadn’t realised this whole star damned time that there was a secret lurking in his eyes. Because it was so fucking obvious now. He’d been evasive, he’d made comments I’d shrugged off, he’d even said goodbye to me though I’d put that down to him talking about worst case scenarios, but now it made a whole lot of sense that left my head spinning.