AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Why are you standing so oddly there?”
He pointed to the floor. “I’m wet. I didn’t want to wreck the carpets.”
She looked down. The toes of his boots were pointed outward to the sides so the whole of him was on the black marble of the fireplace hearth and not on the carpet. A puddle, growing with each drop from his clothes, spread slowly outward from him.
Her eyebrows pulled together and she had to shake her head before she stepped forward. Now was not the time to be sidetracked. “What was it that you wanted to see me for? Des said you would not leave until you talked to me alone. This is alone. What is it you need to say?”
“You are everything.” The three words came from his lips, cracked, the weight of the world in the syllables.
Words that sliced into her gut, shredding it.
Her arms lifted, crossing to rest across her ribcage. “You are done? I can excuse myself?”
The smallest smile quirked the right side of his face. “I will talk at you until you listen to me, Elle. Until you hear me.”
“Or until I leave.”
His fingers went to his forehead, wiping away a line of drips. “You can go when you deem it. I cannot stop you, the only thing I can do is to beg you to stay. To listen.”
Her head tilted to the side and she flipped one hand out from the clasp at her torso, silently urging him onward.
“I couldn’t let the box hurt you—couldn’t let Gatlong near you, and he would have been after you, ready to kill you if I hadn’t left with Hoppler and the box. I saw your face, Elle. Saw how what I did destroyed you. And that I put that pain onto your face.” He paused, his head shaking as he swallowed hard. “It slayed me through and through.”
She blinked, not a muscle in her face twitching as she stared at him.
“Somehow, and I’m not sure how it happened, you became my everything and I didn’t even fully realize it until it was there, right in front of me and I was losing it. Losing you. And the thought that you could be hurt or killed because of the box—it wasn’t even a choice. I had to give you up because keeping you safe was the most important thing.”
His hand ran along the back of his neck. “My lies were always going to catch up with me, Elle. And I lost sanity during that time with you—I started to want more. Hope for more, when all of what I’d created—set into motion these past thirteen years was going to come for me no matter what. I never should have involved you. Never should have fallen in love with you.”
“Fallen in love with me?” She scoffed. “I was a pawn—it’s blatantly clear that’s all I was.”
“You’re wrong.”
“No, you had me fooled.” She shook her head, her face tilting up to the ceiling. “So fooled. I was just a pawn, a tool to get into the baths. You used me.”
His jaw shifted hard to the side. “I did. There is no excuse. That was all I had planned to do. What I vowed to do. Find out what clues the baths held, then get the box and leave. A plan that burned to ash the second I saw you on the edge of that lake at the isle. Proud and vulnerable and hiding so many of your scars that I was forced to see you. Truly see you. I wanted you in that moment, wanted you forever. Wanted the soul of you.”
“Oh, I know all about vows, Rune. About promises one makes to oneself.”
“Elle—“
“And I know about breaking them. I swore I would never let another man into my heart—into my life—again. And you…” She paused, a shiver running across her shoulders. “You shattered that vow I made to myself. I don’t know how you did it, but you did.”
“The same way you did it to me—a whisper in the night, sinking into my soul, stealing away every plan I’d made.”
“Yes.” She nodded, her lips twisting to the side. “But then you crushed what you created. What you did, Rune—how you lied to all of us. Used me. Put Jules in danger from that monster of her father—if he had gotten his hands on that box…” She scoffed, her hand flipping up to wipe away a tear that had spilled from her right eye. “Well, there is a reason vows should be kept. And maybe you should work on keeping your vows—you haven’t even asked about the box.”
“I don’t care about the damn box, Elle.” His hands curled into fists, his voice dropping into a growl—the first anger she’d seen from him since she’d stepped into the room. “I’m here for you, dammit. The box can go to hell, where it belongs. I should have let it go a long time ago.”
Her head jerked back, the savagery of his words vibrating in her chest. “But, Rune, your father—”
“Is the past. Is not my future. That has never been clearer. With you I forgot what I was fighting for all these years—revenge, fulfilling my father’s mission. When I was with you I forgot. The storm of it didn’t fester in my mind like it always had. When I was with you all I wanted was you. Not revenge. Not anything but you.”
He unclenched his fists, shaking his arms before pinning her with his gaze. “Elle, you’re not ready to hear this, but I will do whatever it takes. A week. A month. A year. A hundred years. Whatever time you need. Whatever it takes for you to look at me like you did when we were in the baths the last time.”
Her look sliced into him. “And just how did I look at you?”
“With love, Elle. With love you weren’t sure what to do with. With love that had bubbled up out of nowhere, with no footholds, and yet had somehow managed to slip into the cracks of your heart. With love you wanted no part of but couldn’t deny. You looked at me with the rawest sprouts of love that had no business growing, but did.”
