Page 120 of Only Flames Remain

Days’ end. Had I been knocked out for two entire days?

“Why would you take me against my will? Why would you bind my wrists?” I seethed.

Kallias leaned toward me, his voice only loud enough for me to hear above the crashing waves. “Because I can’t very well come back empty-handed. Not with the knowledge my mother attained from our dearest Lavanya.”

My mind was reeling. “My mother? What does she have to do with this? Leave her out of it!”

Kallias’s smile was sad. “I would have loved to. Only—she was the single person who could reveal to us your true parentage. I must agree with what you are about to say. That it wasn’t right for my mother to have captured her and tortured her—”

“Torture?” My mouth was suddenly dry.

“But the ends justify the means. This is good news! You needn’t worry…your mother is safe. And what she revealed to us has allowed mother to embrace our union. She is finally going to let us be together. This is the best possible outcome.”

He was crazy. He had to be…that was the only reasonable explanation.

Had he always been this callous? Or had he been putting on an act the whole time we had been together? I couldn’t fathom that I had fallen for a man so dense. A man who would think torturing my mother made the ends justify the means.

I cleared my throat. “What did she reveal to you?”

Kallias’s throat bobbed. “I think it best if we wait to reveal that bit of information until we are back on Myrosian soil, and you can speak with Lavanya yourself.”

“Tell me!” I reached for him, desperate for the piece of information he dared hold against me. The answer to where my forbidden magic originated. Whatever it was that would allow Queen Dyata to finally give us her blessing, though I no longer wanted it. I threaded my bound hands into the folds of his tunic.

Funny how things could change so much in merely a few weeks.

Kallias shook his head. He reached out, grasping a piece of raven hair that had escaped my braid and tucked it softly behind my ear.

“You should go back below, dearest. Get some rest. I will wake you when it is time to disembark.”

He turned from me, casting his gaze back out to sea without another word.

My chest felt hollow, the space where my heart should be entirely torn open.

Kallias had captured me and forced me back to Myros. Against my will. He left Enora and Quinnick behind. He completely disregarded everything that I wanted in favor of what he thought was best. It was suffocating.

I racked my brain, but I couldn’t remember it always being this way.

As I watched him at the railing, his back turned toward me, I realized with startling clarity that there was a difference between wanting to be with someone and not wanting to lose them.

I hadn’t wanted to lose Kallias, but in truth, I was no longer in love with him. If I ever truly was to begin with. It didn’t feel anything like it did with Sorin.

It never had.

Kallias had taken me from my mate.

I hadn’t believed Sorin at first…but it had to be true. The farther we sailed from Gothryn, the tighter the tug in my chest grew. As if I were being drawn to him from across the sea.

“You aren’t who I thought you were,” I whispered at Kallias’s back, turning from him.

I had thought he was the love of my life.

I had no idea what love was before. It certainly wasn’t this.

Little Dove.

My gaze dropped to my bound hands.

I was caged.