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Chapter seventy-one
Rune’spasthadcomeback to haunt him. Costing him what he needed most in this life. He bowed his head and said, “I am sorry I did not tell you of my blood debt.”
Faye peered at him, tilting her head as though he spoke madness. “It’s not that you didn’t tell me. Why did you have to break her mind? Killing your brother’s Anarian wasn’t enough?”
Rune recoiled. “You think— I did not break her mind maliciously.”
“How do you accidently break a mind?” Faye spat.
Rune paused, recalling the moment that changed his life. The cost of his arrogance. “My brother and I had a tenuous relationship. Alister announced Prinia and I challenged his choice. I expected him to stand down, instead Alister initiated a blood debt.If you take the woman who quickens my heart, I will take the same from you when your heart quickens.”
Faye’s lightning arced eyes lit with fury, promising violence. “Alister loved a woman and wanted to marry her. And you wouldn’t let him because she was an Anarian?Thenyou traded the person you may or may not fall in love with, in the future?”
Her pain and anger tore at his heart. If he had understood what he would be offering in trade, Rune would have left his brother to his choices. But he’d trusted in those who didn’t deserve it. Nothing more than a pawn, fooled into thinking he pulled his own strings.
“I lived for twenty-two centuries and felt nothing. In my arrogance I cut my hand and spoke the terms of his blood debt.”
Faye gazed off into the forest. “That’s not an excuse.”
Rune swallowed. “The three of us struggled. I pulled away from Alister’s blade and she twisted in my grasp, severing her artery. Prinia bled out in The Eyes before Belind could heal her. Alister sealed our blood debt by kissing my blood off her lips. She rose a vampire a few days later. My blood was too dark for her. It broke her mind. I asked Sadi to heal her, but Prinia is beyond her capability.” Sadi spent more than a decade exhausting herself, reaching for a ghost. Prinia never answered her calls that would lead her out of Chaos and back to her physical body.
Faye met his gaze and remained silent, searching his eyes. Rune swallowed. Waiting.
“Can I heal her if you find my altar?”
“Healing the mind and core are Familiar magic. I will ask Sadi if she would be willing to teach you. You are stronger than we are.”
“I want to heal her,” Faye said.
“Familiar are secretive of their magic. I will speak with Sadi.” Faye stood before him but remained completely out of reach. “How do I make things right with you?”
Faye looked away and touched the front of her neck. She spoke so softly he scarcely heard her. “I care for you, but we fundamentally don’t work.”
Rune stepped closer to her, taking her hand in his. “Then teach me. I cannot be without you. I love you.”
“I forgive you. I’ll help you repair what you did to your brother’s wife.” Faye squeezed his hand.
Rune’s heart leapt as the Ra’Voshnik stirred, listening. Hoping.
Then she let him go. “But you don’t love me. If you did, you would be upset with how your queen was treated for the past twenty-five years, not expecting me to shuck off my old life. You don’t hear me. You don’t value what I value.”
Rune’s lips parted. She couldn’t mean that. He looked down at her, utterly defeated.
She stood on her toes to press her lips to his. Rune closed his eyes, willing her to feel how he’d yearned for her, his entire life. To glimpse the life he envisioned at her side.
Her fingers brushed over the side of his face, as she gazed up at him. She turned from him going back into her cottage, speaking two words over her shoulder before she closed the door.
“Goodbye Rune.”
Chapter seventy-two
Fatewasacruelmistress. Rune leaned back in his chair, his mind wondering to useless ideation. What his life would have looked like if fate gifted him his night breeze during the first few centuries of his life. His path would have differed greatly.
Rune had respected his queen’s wishes. He’d given her space, keeping his distance while monitoring her home and Alister’s location.
He would protect her even if she no longer wanted him. He mourned his loss, feeling her absence more with each passing moment. He occupied his days with the few things he had left of her. He maintained her herb garden and searched for her altar.
The Ra’Voshnik had been inconsolable in the hours that followed Faye’s departure from their lives. It sank silently into the recesses of his mind and had not stirred since.
