Page 179

My tears keep coming. “That doesn’t make me feel better.”

“I know.”

“Stop saying you know.”

His face twists. “I don’t know what else to fucking say.”

There emotion—real emotion.

His voice rises. “You think I don’t understand what it feels like to have this place take something that belonged to you?”

Malakai says his name but Ezra ignores him.

“I have spent two hundred and thirty-five years waking up on land I fucking hate.”

His voice cracks on the last word. He turns away from us, dragging a hand over his face before he starts pacing. “Two hundred and thirty-five years, Sage.”

There’s no anger in his voice anymore.

That would be easier.

This is grief.

“I watched my mother die here. My sisters.”

He stops.

Swallows.

The muscle in his jaw jumps as he stares at nothing.

“Friends. People I loved. Their children.”

His breath shudders out of him.

“Then their children.”

Fuck.

“I watched entire families grow old in front of me. I watched babies become adults, adults become old men and women, and then I stood beside their graves looking exactly the same as I did the day they were born.”

My anger begins to drain away.

Ezra presses a fist against the center of his chest like there’s something inside him he’s physically trying to hold together.

“And every fucking year, they come back.”

His eyes lift to mine.

“The lights go up. The music starts. People drink and dance and laugh. They run through the same fucking fields where we lost everything, and they call it tradition.”

His voice breaks again.

This time, he doesn’t hide it.

“They throw a goddamn party over the grave of the woman I couldn’t save.”

The room goes silent.