“I wanted to.”His voice scraped against itself.“Great skies, Myanin, I wanted to.When I followed you into this book, some part of me still believed that if I could just stand close enough, say enough, make you remember enough, then the universe would finally correct itself.”
His mouth curved, but there was no humor in it.A small, self-mocking thing that hurt to watch.“That was arrogance.”
She had no idea what to do with that.Absolutely none.Her hands flexed at her sides, looking for something to hold or break or grip.
“I have known you were meant for me for so long that I let wanting become certainty.”He looked back at her then, and the nakedness in his gaze stole every clever word from her mouth.“But you are not a thing misplaced.You are not an oath I can force into fulfillment.You are not mine because I survived missing you.”
The corridor breathed again.Pages shivered in long, soft waves on either side of them.
Truth.
Myanin’s chest hurt in a way that had nothing to do with combat.
Shade took one step back.Not away exactly.But enough.Enough that she felt the space open between them like a wound that had only just decided to bleed.
“If Gerick is what gives you peace,” he said, voice rough now, “then I will help you return to him.”
“No.”The word left her before thought could stop it.
Shade froze.So did she.The corridor stilled with them, every shifting page going abruptly silent, as though the entire Nushtonia had leaned in to listen.
Myanin could hear her own breathing in the absolute silence, too fast, too shallow.Her pulse beat hard in her ears, thudding against the words she had not meant to say out loud and absolutely could not take back.
Shade’s eyes locked on hers, and for once he looked genuinely stunned.Lips parted.Brows drawn.There was something almost boyish in the way he forgot to school his features.
She lifted a finger and pointed it at him.“Do not look smug.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re thinking about it.”
“I am thinking many things, none of which are safe to say while you’re armed with fingernails and spite.”
“I will end you.”
“I believe you.”
But his voice had changed; It had softened in a way that made her want to look anywhere else.The space between them had not.It still waited, charged and watching.
Myanin looked down at her hands.They were shaking.She curled them into fists, nails biting into her palms, and the small bite of pain steadied her enough to speak.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she admitted, and the words tasted like blood.“I don’t know how to want something that hurts someone who is good.”
Shade’s face went still.
“I don’t know how to look at him and not hate myself,” she continued, because apparently her mouth had decided truth was the theme of the day and she was simply along for the miserable ride.“I don’t know how to look at you and pretend nothing in me answers.I don’t know what that makes me.”
Shade slowly crossed the distance between them.The parchment floor whispered beneath each step.This time he did not touch her.He stopped close enough that she felt the heat of him along her front, but he kept his hands at his sides, fingers flexing once before going still, like restraint had become a physical thing he was choosing to carry.
“It makes you honest.”
She laughed once, sharp and wet, and dragged the back of her wrist across her cheek before any actual tears had a chance to commit to the act.“That’s generous.”
“No.”His eyes held hers.“It’s brutal.But it’s true.”
The parchment beneath their feet flickered.A new path opened at the far end of the corridor, the wall there parting in a slow, deliberate seam.Gold light spilled across the floor in a narrow line that pointed toward them like an invitation, or a verdict.
The Nushtonia had accepted something.Myanin hated that she knew it.She also hated that part of her was relieved.
