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“You’ll need those,” Bash said abruptly. He stopped pacing to gesture toward my feet.
“My shoes? If you’re taking me somewhere to yell at me, my room works perfectly fine.”
“I’m not going to yell at you,” he said flatly. “You make your own decisions.”
I retied my shoes and stood up. “You’re just going to glare at me then? We can talk about it if you’d like.”
“There is no need,” he said. The air in the room stilled like the entire realm held its breath to watch the fallout of me kissing another fae king.
Bash’s eyes darted over the floor in the way that Cal’s always did when he was sorting through something.
This pleased me. The glass-hearted fae king cared. I knew it.
“Bash, whatever you need to say, I can take it.”
“There’s nothing to speak about. If Thorn wishes to kiss you, he can. If he falls in love with you, it will be his heart that shatters when you leave. It will be him who falls apart when you aren’t here anymore. It will be him who mourns you for eons to come.”
My breath caught as Bash went on. My hand went to a chair to steady me as the words tumbled from his lips, and my ears caught the hints of desire and hurt mixed together. His gaze wasn’t on me. It was on the walls, the fireplace, the paintings, anywhere but on my own, as if his words exposed too much of him already and he wanted to keep some part hidden.
But the words were giving him away.
“If he is foolish enough to love a mortal girl, then let him. But you aren’t his to cherish. You never can be. You will die someday, while he lives on, empty without you. Kings were not meant to love fragile mortals who are fated to die and leave us alone. The pain of that is too great. And he can’t . . .” his voice cracked and his head dropped. His next words were whispers.
“I can’t, Thea. I can’t do it.”
I didn’t need to take off his mask. I saw him now. I saw his pain. His heart wasn’t cracked because he never gave it, but it was chipped in its own way from the pain of trying to protect it. Keeping himself from loving others was a burden he bore so he would never know the sting of loss.
I went to his side. “Bash—”
He stepped away. “I told you. We can’t help but love you. But this?” His hand briefly touched mine, and his voice was barely audible. “This will break me. I can’t do it, Althea. I can’t love you.”
A tear carved its way down my cheek. “I’m not asking you to.”
His thumb brushed away my tear. “You don’t need to. I never stood a chance.”
We stood silent for a long time. Close, but never touching. Letting the world move on while we stayed in that moment of unexplored feelings and warnings of what would happen if we crossed the line. I painfully reminded myself that I couldn’t have a future here. Everything I did had to be for the sake of the queens who would come after me.
Your heart will only lead to him, and ruin lies there.
I couldn’t offer him a future, but I could offer my painting. In that moment, it was all I trusted myself to do. I went over to it. “It’s not finished,” I said, turning the painting toward him. “I need to do your eyes still, but here it is.”
He came and took the painting in his hands. I bit the inside of my cheek while waiting for his response. I’d never painted a portrait for another person before, and the anticipation of how he would like it was almost unbearable. Especially because it was him.
But I hadn’t expected the moisture in his eyes.
“It’s remarkable,” he said slowly. “I can take stars from the sky, but that’s the extent of my power. I can only steal beauty. But you? You create it.” His eyes lifted to me. “You are it.”
How could he expect me not to care for him when he said things like that?
He set the painting down. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”
He stared at it for a while longer before speaking again. “Come. I have something to show you.”
He didn’t take my hand as Thorn had but strode to the balcony where a cloak hung on the glass doors. He took it down and tossed it to me. The fabric settled in my hands, almost toppling me over. Hints of a cinnamon scent clung to the thick fibers.
“What’s this?”
“For our adventure.”
