“She needed me,” he said.
“Yes.”
“But she may not choose me.”
The Great Luna stepped closer.The air around her smelled like rain on ancient stone.
“Love that is true does not become false because it is not forever in the way you hoped.”
Gerick closed his eyes.He hated that.He hated it because some part of him recognized the truth in it.
Myanin had never deceived him.Great Luna, she had tried to give him what she thought a mate should give.Loyalty.Trust.Fierce defense.Even tenderness, in the rare moments she allowed herself to be seen.
But there had always been a door inside her she could not open for him.He had thought patience would eventually become the key.Perhaps he had mistaken patience for permission to wait outside a room never meant for him.
His breath shook.Just once.The smallest crack in a wall he had spent centuries building.
Peri made a small sound and turned away, wiping at her face with unnecessary aggression, the heel of her hand pressing hard against her cheekbone.
The Great Luna lifted one hand and touched Gerick’s chest, directly over his heart.Her palm was warmer than the night, warmer than fire, warmer than any precious memory.
Warmth moved through him, and truth, and in that truth, a form of comfort.Images flickered behind his closed eyes.
Myanin was laughing despite herself beside a fire, the firelight gilding the rare softness at the corner of her mouth.Myanin was standing in blood and refusing to fall, jaw set, knees locked, hand still gripping the hilt of a blade that had been red for hours.Myanin was asleep in a chair with his cloak wrapped around her shoulders, lashes dark against her cheeks, her breathing deep for the first time in days.Myanin was looking at him with gratitude so deep that it had almost resembled peace.
Then Myanin was in darkness, reaching instinctively for Shade.
Not because Gerick had failed.
Because some parts of her had recognized that male before she had words for them.
Gerick opened his eyes.The Great Luna’s hand dropped, slow and reverent.
“What are you asking of me?”he said.
His voice was calm now.Too calm.The kind of calm that came when a warrior saw the battlefield clearly and understood exactly where the death blow would fall.
The Great Luna’s gaze saddened.“Not yet.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No,” she agreed.“It is mercy.”
A humorless breath left him, half scoff, half wound.“Mercy would be ignorance.”
“No.Ignorance would be a delay.Mercy is allowing you the dignity of choice before necessity takes it from you.”
The words settled over him.
Choice.
Gerick looked at the Nushtonia.His eyes moved over the dark cover and found nothing he had not already memorized.
He understood then.Not everything.Not the full shape of what was coming.But enough.
If Myanin’s life remained tied to his, then whatever choice waited inside that book would demand more than truth.More than confession.More than the emotional flaying which the Nushtonia seemed so fond of.
It would demand release.
