She shuffles back in silent retreat, and my heart vaults.
I still, hands crunching into fists so tight my knuckles pop.
Silence settles between us, a great beast crouched on its haunches, plotting which of us it’s going to pounce upon.
“Youknew,” she scolds, the words the crack of a whip.
Knew the prophecy. Knew that she would find him.
Losehim.
“Yes.”
I knew and never told her. Never warned her of the pain her path was paved in.
Another layer of hurt hatches in her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she cries. “I expected that from Mother and Father, butyou—” Her voice breaks, and something in my chest feels like it’s twisting, gouging at my insides.“I thought youcared.”
Caringwas watching her find a love that made her glow. It was hearing her speak about dreams of her own family—a family I knew she’d never have.
Caringwas hunting for ways to manipulate the fates while she lived in peaceful oblivion, not knowing that the happiest days of her life were about to come to an abrupt and heart-wrenching end. That she would be forced to watch her mate decompose from the inside out, helpless to fix him.
Savehim.
She pushes her shoulders back and lifts her chin, swatting a tear from her cheek. “Mother and Father—”
“Are coming.” My voice is cut with the promise of something fierce threatening to split through my skin. “I was faster.”
I’d powered across the plains once I’d realized she escaped the castle. The sun tore across the sky five times while I tracked her scent, driven by the knowledge that she was out here—alone—being feasted on by her broken heart.
I look at her bloodied arm as the wind pulls her scent to me, punched with the metallic tang of not justherblood, but also that of a goat.
Fuck.
“You asked Maars a question …”
Her gaze calcifies into a cold, bitter mask. “Yes.”
“And?”
“He told me why I don’t die no matter how many times Istab.”
I flinch from the blow she landed with such precision, visions of her flashing into the forefront of my memory: her lifeless body cast across her blood-soaked bed; the room smelling like the death she craved—the death that didn’t stick the first time … or any of the times that followed.
A loosely tied ribbon falls from her hair, the strip of white swirling through the air before landing atop the lake in a splash of sizzle and steam, the material swiftly disintegrating.
I chance another stolen step forward, hand raised as if to tame the wild, broken beast before me. “What did he say?” I ask, picturing my hand delving between her ribs, gripping hold of her hurt.
Crushing it.
“Our father.” Her head rolls back, and a laugh spills from her, manic and twisted. “Ourfather!”She screams and waves the talon through the air, wobbling.
Stumbling.
Her foot scores the edge, and a wildness swipes at my insides, every muscle in my body poised to leap as a piece of stone breaks off and plops into the water, scattering the scriptures.
I blow out an exhale as she finds her balance and straightens, then half turns to watch the ripples cast across the pallid water. Slowly, her gaze drops to the talon, its severe length curved at the tip, dripping blood. “The only way for me to join him is to impale myself through the heart with this. Covered inhisblood.”
His—
