Page 338 of House Ignis

I’d imagined telling her the truth a hundred different ways. Slowly. Carefully. On my terms, maybe, because apparently I was still arrogant enough to think I could control how something like this unfolded.

I’d imagined her screaming at me.

Threatening me.

Probably setting something I owned on fire.

That I could handle.

What I hadn’t imagined was this.

Ava waking in Isereth, restrained by magic, surrounded by a world she’d been taught didn’t exist.

And realizing I had known.

Every fucking second she’d known me.

Her rage I could survive. I’d earned it.

It was everything before the rage that terrified me.

The recalculation.

She’d go back through every moment we’d shared and pull it apart. Every sparring match. Every stolen look. Every kiss. Every secret. Every time my shadows had behaved in ways an Umbra wielder’s shadows shouldn’t.

Every lie.

Veyari.

Safely extinct.

Monsters from history books and bedtime stories.

Except we weren’t extinct.

And eventually, she’d reach the question I’d been trying not to think about all fucking night.

Was Asher even real?

My fingers tightened around the glass.

She could hate me for lying. Hate me for bringing her here. Hate me for every truth I’d kept buried.

But if she looked at me and wondered whether every touch had been manipulation, whether every kiss had been part of the mission...

Whether I love you had been another lie...

That would destroy me.

Because those words had been the truest thing I’d ever given her.

Go to her.

I stared into the dying fire.

I would.

When she woke, I’d be there.