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No. It was her fault for not noticing. For not doing more to be there for him in the way she always craved someone would be there for her.

“Is this about what that boy said? About you not waking me up?”

That got Elian to stop. Thicket did, too. His back was outlined against the horizon, drenched tunic billowing in the breeze. She couldn’t help but feel as though he looked lost as he gazed out across the expanse of the ocean.

“I knew you didn’t love me,” he admitted. The words sent a jolt straight through her. “Before the curse. Yet I clung to my love like a lifeline. I thought it would be enough to wake you up. It wasn’t. But I didn’t give up.” He glanced back at her, eyes hollow and rimmed with red. “I tried desperately to find you in the sleeping curse and bring you back. At first, I came every day, searching for even a glimpse of you. I never once found anything. Eventually, Caspian limited the times I could see you, telling me I was only getting in the way.”

Elian glanced down at his palm. “When you told me I had helped you wake up, I was overjoyed, thinking that maybe, just maybe, it had actually worked. That I had helped you. That my presence meant something.” He clenched his fist. “But yesterday you said you had tried to grab my hand. At that moment I knew. I hadn’t been the one to reach you.” He let out a sad, broken laugh. “Everyone else knew it before I did. I am sure they expected you to break off the engagement the moment you woke up. Deep down, I did, too, but like a fool I clung to the hope you wouldn’t. And now that I am with you, I can’t shake this feeling that I shouldn’t be.”

The words sent a shock of cold running through Thicket’s body, hollowing out her insides all the way down to her toes.

Thicket had thought he had felt estranged from Vindrya. She thought getting him into the meeting and showing the people just how powerful he was would have helped. But all this time, had he really thought he wasn’t good enough for her because this so-called True Love’s Kiss had failed?

I guess this time I wanted to be the one to whisk away your worries.

“Do you really think I care that you couldn’t wake me from the curse?”

“That isn’t the problem,” Elian said. When his eyes finally met hers again, the cobalt of his irises was nothing but a swirling storm of sorrow. “If I hadn’t been your fiancé before the sleeping curse, you probably wouldn’t have looked twice at me.”

A piece of Thicket’s heart fell away. “How can you say that?”

“Ever since you woke up, your mind has been on trying to save Vindrya—as it should be. I am the one who kept pushing you to feel something for me. It’s the obvious choice for someone with no memories, to give someone from her past a chance just in case.”

“Don’t you dare say you forced me. I wouldn’t have agreed to go out with you if I hadn’t wanted to.”

“Maybe. But if I had left you alone, who knows what could have been.”

“We can sit around playing the what if game all day, but it doesn’t change the fact that I saw you, liked you, and wanted to give us a chance to be something.” She took a step towards him.

He took a step back, curling his fingers in close, as though restraining himself from reaching out to her. “And we did. But I don’t want either of us to look back and regret being together. Maybe you love me and maybe I truly love you. But what if we both subconsciously made this work because we thought we were each other’s only option and in turn could have neglected something that was right in front of us. Something better.”

Thicket searched for the words to tell him he was wrong but they refused to come. She didn’t know what she felt. Elian had told her she didn’t love him before the curse. Was that true? Everything was so jumbled in her head, warring between her past and her present. There was no way of telling what she felt and whether it was true.

“So,” she whispered. “What do you want to do?”

Elian licked his lips. “I think we need to give each other some space.”

Her heart cracked. “What kind of space?”

“Space to get to know each other again. As friends this time. All of my memories of you are from a version of you that no longer exists. It is unfair for me to expect you to be that same person. But I also can’t change who I am. If in the end, you truly want me, I will be the happiest man alive. But I don’t want you to be with me because you think I am your only choice or because you feel obligated to make it work. I think we both deserve to be someone’s first choice.”

She hated to admit it, but he was right. When she first woke up, she hadn’t been looking for love. When Elian had showed up, willing to give her everything she had always wanted, she let her guard down. Had thought for a moment that maybe love was something that was in the cards for her. He wasn’t the only one who had wanted this to work, but she had wanted it for the wrong reasons. Her attempts to force a relationship had only hurt Elian in the end.

Love wasn’t something to rush into to ease the ache of loneliness. It was something she should choose. Should want. Should crave.

She thought about Bern and her longing to travel. Lotta and the time she had spent away from her brothers. And Marcellus who was tasked with protecting the life that had cost him his family. Everyone had sacrificed something for her. Because they believed in her.

She owed it to herself and to him to use this space to figure that out.

Maybe, one day when she was stronger, she would find her way back to him.

“Zel yt fya.” The sand by her feet shifted, forming the shape she willed in her mind before heating it, turning the pale yellow to a deep, molten red. Thicket released the spell. The red hot glow faded, leaving a glinting object behind. It was the first time she had successfully performed spell alteration. The fight earlier had finally helped give her the sense of how much energy she needed to supply, allowing her to do it consecutively. And now…

Thicket scooped the object from the sand, revealing a glass rose.

She may not know what she wanted. She may not even know if there was a future in store for her. Not if she couldn’t secure Dymree’s army and beat Lavender. What she did know was that Elian had appeared in her vision in the Lost Soul Lagoon.

She didn’t know what role he was supposed to play in her life, but she still wanted him in it.