Page 58 of Bound By the Sleeper’s Harp

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said again, lifting her voice, rounding on him. Her face was tight, eyes flashing with hurt, with fear.

“I will fucking kill him,” he hissed. “I will hunt him down and I will rip out his entrails. And then I will fucking strangle him with them.”

Her eyes rounded. She took a staggering step back, a new fear flashing in her gaze. “Stop,” she whispered. “Please, just—stop!”

He froze, mouth opening, closing. His throat went dry and he swallowed. He was scaring her. “Fuck,” he muttered. He ran a hand over his face. “I’m sorry, Eleanor. I didn’t mean to get carried away. I’m sorry.”

Her jaw clenched. “It’s…”

It fucking hurt, seeing her like this. It woke a primal side of him—made him want to protect her. “We don’t have to talk about it,” he said, rushing through the words, hoping to calm her down. He didn’t want to cause her pain, no matter how badly he wanted to know what had happened. It was his fault. No—it was that fucking human’s fault. Another fucking human. Even without magical abilities, they could be as bad, if not worse, than supernaturals.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

It shouldn’t have wrenched his insides to see her like this, but it did. It made him see red, made him want to smash someone’s face to a pulp—Luke’s. He leashed the goblin side of himself.

“I was hurt too,” he said, the words catching in his throat, surprising even himself. But now that they were out, he couldn’t seem to stop. “When I was younger—a long time ago now. I was betrayed by someone I loved.”

She watched him, motionless, except for the tilting of her head.

“I told you yesterday that I draw the line with humans, and for good reason.”

Her brows pulled together, a small line appearing. “They hurt you?” she asked, her voice tentative.

He exhaled, letting the memory wash over him. How long had it been since he’d thought of it? There was a time when it was all he could think of.

He walked over to the mats and sat down, crossing his legs, bracing his forearms on his knees. Eleanor stayed put. Her eyes were glued to him.

“I fell in love with a human once,” he said. “And I thought she loved me back.” He blew out a long breath, loathe to recall the dark days he’d been born into. “This was during a time when magic was feared. Witch trials and inquisitors and exorcists.” Her eyes went wide. He’d expected that. He didn’t look a day past thirty. “The world fears what it does not understand, and in those times, humans feared anything they could not explain. Now you have stories filled with boy wizards and magicians and vampires. Women read books about dominant wolf shifters and all the naughty things they do.”

She blinked. Red crept up her neck. Hmm, interesting. He’d explore that later.

“Things have changed, sugar. The world has changed. Not so, when I was young—young and naive.”

“What happened?” she whispered, inching closer.

Good.

“Come and sit. I’ll tell you.” His heart was racing.

She nodded, finally creeping over.

Once she was seated on the floor, he began again. “I fell in love with a human named Sara. She was bright and loud, the daughter of a well-loved magistrate in a large village in eastern Europe. I was born there in that region, you know, in Europe. Didn’t move here to America until a hundred years ago.

“In those days, women were expected to be silent, but she would walk into a room and speak, and everyone would stop what they were doing and listen. Being the daughter of a magistrate, she had more freedom than most, even though religions were sweeping the European continent at the time. I should have known that kind of sway could be dangerous in the right circumstances.” He pressed his teeth together, inhaling through his nose.

“I cannot say for sure, how she found out about me. I tried to determine the truth for years after. For a while, it ate me alive—became an unhealthy obsession. But I realized that to move on, I had to give it up. It was freeing. But, I digress.

“One afternoon, I ran into her in the market. We’d been courting for months. My mother and father had warned me against getting tangled up with humans. I didn’t listen. I was going to marry this girl, and then perhaps eventually, tell her what I was—or not. I truly didn’t mind if she never knew. What kind of love forces a person to keep secrets?”

“The kind that isn’t really love,” Eleanor managed, her eyes wide and understanding.

He nodded. “As I said, I was young and naive. But, back to the market.” He smiled—or tried to at least. There was so much he remembered vividly about that day. The smell of autumn, crisp with the scent of decay. The screaming children playing tag. The farmers walking their livestock past the outskirts of the village center. “She was shopping with a friend. We caught sight of each other and she signaled to me, so we retreated around the corner of a building. After kissing her soundly—because it was hard to do much else in those days—she told me that her father had found out about us, that we couldn’t be together because he didn’t approve. I was…” He shook his head. “I thought I was heartbroken. But she told me she wanted to run away. Knowing she would give it all up for me, leave everything behind, cracked my heart wide open like an egg. I should have known, even then. Sara wasn’t the kind of girl to forsake her family, her life. But all the daydreams I had, the promises, us owning our own farm, raising a family together—” He huffed. “We agreed to meet just after midnight that night, behind the blacksmith’s forge. I was to get a couple of horses, pack up as much as we’d need to move a few towns over and resettle.”

“Oh, Bastian,” Eleanor whispered, blanching.

He swallowed. “I agonized all evening, packing and unpacking, just to make sure I got it right. I lived by myself at the time. Though I was young, I wasn’t young enough to cling to my parents. But I had no problem leaving everything behind—all I’d built for myself. I’d done it before.”

“How old were you?” Eleanor asked, breaking his trance.