“You believe I intentionally deceived you?” I verified without raising my eyes from the sheets I was folding.
“Was that not your intention?” he retorted as he began to pace the tent. “Was that kiss not meant to—”
Rian cut himself off, and I looked up on impulse when he turned away from me quickly. I waited breathlessly as my mate raised his hands to interlace his fingers behind his head. His torment was obvious in every tense inch of that beautiful body.
“Youinflictedme with that kiss,” he accused me after a moment, his voice softened. “You are a Seer. You must have known what it would do to me!” he insisted as his hands slid free of his head to hang at his sides in defeat. “You had to have known that with just one kiss you could completelyruinme.”
An aching emotion began working its way up the back of my throat, but I swallowed it down as best I could.
“You do not understand.”
“Thenmakeme understand!” he ordered more sharply without turning to face me. “Make me understand.”
“It was never my intention to hurt you,” I whispered, searching for the right words, but I was too emotional to focus on my Sight. Too terrified that I might have already destroyed us before we could even begin. “What would you have had me do instead, Rian?” I asked him as tears began to fall from my eyes again.
“I would have you tell me the truth!” he maintained, turning to look down at me. It was like a kick in the gut to meet those anguished emerald eyes.
“So you could push me away before we even—”
“Yes!” he interrupted. “If that had been my decision, then I would have been entitled to make it! But you took away my right to make a choice. You had the advantage over me and did not hesitate to exploit it. You diverted me every time I tried to ask for the truth,” he pointed out.
He was right. Iknewthat he was right. And although it was an impulsive decision at the time, Ididkiss him so he would know how it could be between us. I knew how it would affect him. I knew it would give me the leverage to keep him away from other women and prevent him from betraying me and breaking my heart.
But I could not bring myself to apologize. Not when our future was all that had kept me sane during the years of torture and imprisonment. Not after I had endured hell, chosen to enduremore, just to give us this opportunity to know one another. I knew he was distrustful and jaded, but if he would only let me in…
“Are you only angry because you believe I took away your choice somehow? Or is there also some part of you that is angry you no longer have the excuse of ignorance for wanting more of me?”
His jaw ticked, and he refused to answer, so I turned my eyes away again in defeat. I did not want to talk about it anymore, and luckily, I had orders to distract me.
“You asked me to tell you when I felt ready to return to my coven. Do you intend to keep your word and help me deliver retribution?” I asked as my hands curled into fists within the folded blankets. “The aes sídhe require a day to prepare for you to move them. Ornella and Ciaran are in the Vale retrieving Riordan’s queen. Darragh and all your generals have things well in hand in Mionlach. You have time for me now. That will soonchange.”
Rian hesitated, his eyes drilling into me for a moment while I stubbornly averted my gaze.
“Is that it? No more discussion of what’s between us? About your intentions or how you went about this?”
“Wehavetalked about it! You have been all too clear about your feelings. What more is there to say? I have no wish to hear more about how detestable I am to you!”
I did not look up at him as angry tears stung my eyes, but I could feel the weight of his accusing stare.
“Will you keep your word or not, Rian?” I demanded once I managed to collect myself. I forced myself to raise my chin and met his icy glare with pure determination to maintain my composure around him. Even if it felt like my chest was about to crack open from the heartbreak.
His resentment and frustration were palpable while we warred with one another’s gaze until he finally turned his face away with a disappointed shake of his head.
“I always keep my word. Go and change,” he relented wearily as he turned away from me.
“No need,” I assured him as I rose and walked over to the wooden box that I’d brought with me from his yurt. Inside was a knife in a sheath and a vial tied on a leather throng that looped over my head. “I would rather not ruin a dress with the blood and ash of the Phoenix Coven.”
I tucked the vial into the collar of my nightgown and buckled the knife to my thigh before turning toward Rian. He eyed the dainty white cotton and lace I was wearing with obvious skepticism but said nothing before casting a portal in the room. He took my arm less gently than usual and pulled me through the cool swirl of magic.
I realized I had never actually been outside my father’s coven once we reached Uile Breithà. The sheer face of the mountainside that housed my coven was riddled with windows and balconies. A defensive wall had been built in a semicircle at the baseof the upper part of the temple that was visible above ground. But it extended deep into the earth and into the mountain behind. Guards patrolled the wall, their shadows passing by the arrow slits of the battlements, and smoke rose from fires inside the towers where they warmed themselves.
My eyes followed the smoke up to where stars were still gleaming in the predawn sky. The sun had just begun to tease the horizon with the promise of a new day that the Phoenix Coven would never see. It reminded me of the nights before I was chosen as a future High Priestess when I’d sneak up into the temple. Nights when I would stare into this same sky and dream of a time when I was no longer forced to live in the underbelly of a mountain.
Little had I known at the time, there were deeper darks than the storage room I was locked in for misbehaving. There were far worse evils than an apathetic mother who obeyed an abusive husband who would murder her.
“Are you still certain you want to do it?” Rian asked. “My offer to do this for you stands if you would rather not sully your conscience.”
“It must be me,” I insisted, my loose hair drifting over my shoulder in a cool mountain breeze that smelled of the pines and frozen earth.
