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“If I could change anything of what happened, Sloane, I would do it in a heartbeat.”
“That, I do believe.” A smile, achingly sad, lifted the corners of her mouth and she stepped toward him, her feet stopping on the other side of the foundation. “We are both living in maelstroms of ifs, Reiner. And I have not been able to bring myself to ken what to do with all of them.”
“But you do now?”
“No. I don’t.” She shrugged, looking over her shoulder at the carcass of the cottage. “Maybe I’ll never ken how to deal with the ifs and they will always hold a cloud over my head, dark regrets that will weigh upon me until my death.”
His heart splintered for her pain. For pain he wanted to take from her but didn’t have a clue as to how to do so.
“I visited Torrie several days ago.”
“You did? How is she healing?”
Her gaze swung back to him. “Terribly. She is so bitter—so very, very bitter—and I cannot blame her. She is in pain constantly. How could she not be bitter? How could she no longer want life? How could she not rail and hate everyone around her?”
His words dipped low. “She wants to die?”
Sloane nodded, fresh tears cresting on her lower eyelashes. “But she was such a beautiful soul before this. The best out of all of us.”
“She was?”
Her lips drew inward for a long moment. “If one is lucky, it is the people around you that make you a better person—Torrie did that for me—for all of us. We were all better people because of her kind spirit. A spirit that has been extinguished and I fear will never return.” Her hand swept around her, and she followed it, stopping with her back to him. “She could have died here, just the same, for how this has destroyed her.”
Reiner stared at her back. She was pulling away from him. Removing herself. Not a full day married and his wife was already leaving him.
And he couldn’t do a thing about it, for this could very well be his fault.
He could reach out and touch her, grab her, pull her to him. But that would be forcing her—capturing her. And the one thing he knew was that she needed her freedom. It had been the only way to her heart at Wolfbridge. He prayed it would be again.
The wind caught the loose length of her hair, lifting it and setting it about her shoulders. It made her shake her head, snapping her out of the past, and she turned fully toward him.
For a long breath, she stared at him with her blue eyes. Stared at him with the weight of the world in her gaze.
Then her right hand lifted, reaching out over the stones of the foundation to slide along his palm. Her fingers entwined with his, her voice shaking. “I don’t want to be destroyed, Reiner. I have to move forward—push onward whether I wish to or not. Push forward and not make the same mistakes again. Learn from the past.”
With a sweeping glance about her, she stepped over the stones to stand before him. Her head tilted up, her gaze intent on his face. “And you do too. I needed to see this place again. I neededyouto see this place. Because what matters is the future, Reiner. Our future. And with that, everything you touch, everything you have control over. I need you to care. Care enough to never let something like this happen again.”
His lips parted and the inhale of breath into his chest slammed into him, shaking him to his core. It took three heartbeats before he could form the realization of why she’d dragged him here into words. “You want me to be a better man.”
She nodded. “I do.” Her look dipped to his chest for a breath before lifting to his face. “And not only that, I want you to give up your own insatiable need for vengeance. I worshipped at that altar and almost lost you. My hatred not letting me see what was in front of me. And I don’t want the hatred twisting you into something you cannot control.”
He stared into her eyes. The cool blue he could lose himself in forever, the drop of amber a buoy in the depths. For as much as he knew what she was asking of him was what he needed to do, he could not bring himself to it. His voice came into the air rough, breaking. “I cannot. I’m not ready.”
Her eyes closed for a long moment, her chest lifting in a heavy breath.
One, two, three seconds passed.
She opened her eyes to him. “Then I will walk beside you until you are.”
{ Chapter 17 }
Sloane glanced over her shoulder at the rough grey stones lining the entrance to the empty circular staircase she’d just escaped up through. For how Wolfbridge Castle had been crawling with people the last three days—guests and servants alike—she could scarcely believe she’d managed to escape the throngs for a spell. The guests had given her very few moments alone with Vicky, much less Reiner.
At breakfast before he went out with the hunting party, Reiner had whispered to her that a solar at the top of the east tower should be empty, as it was one of the few rooms in the castle that hadn’t been renovated.
But he hadn’t had time to tell her how to get up to the room before they were interrupted by Lord Langton inquiring about the stretch of land they would be hunting on for the day.
So she’d had to search for it. After a solid half hour of wandering halls and dodging conversations, she’d only minutes ago stumbled upon an inconspicuous door in the passageway to the great hall that hid a circular stone staircase winding its way upward. For all of Wolfbridge’s grandeur, its heart still held fast to the medieval bones of stone.
