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“I daresay you left your heart at the palace.”
I scowled, but I didn’t respond.
“A man who knows love is a rich man, Uncle. A man who’s lost love isn’t poor, but incomplete, and you have the air of a man who has lost the woman he’s meant to be with.”
“We’re not fated,” I blurted out. I gripped the armrests of my chair. “What does it matter what we are if we’re not meant to be together?”
“Fate and love aren’t always the same thing,” Xenos said. “You can love without fate having a hand in it. You can love very deeply. Ailey and I weren’t fated, but we knew that we wanted to be together forever, and nothing else matters but what we are to each other. She’s everything to me, and I wouldn’t trade my life with her for anything, not even for a fated bond, if that ever came along. Ailey is my world. If I lost her…” He sighed. “If you want my opinion as a friend, I think you should go back home and fight for the woman you love.”
I shook my head. “Thanks, but you don’t know the full story. I think we’re just about done here. There’s nothing else you want to add to your request for leave, is there?”
“Is she with another man?” Xenos asked despite my dismissal.
“That’s not up for discussion,” I said. I stood. “I have a few other things to take care of. You’re dismissed, Lieutenant.” I started to walk around the desk, but Xenos kept talking.
“Fight for what you want, Uncle. That’s what I would do. In the end, you decide your fate, you know. It’s a choice.”
I glared at Xenos. “I don’t want to tell you again. You’re dismissed, nephew.”
Xenos nodded curtly, his face an expressionless mask. “I take it my permission to speak freely has been revoked.”
I clenched my jaw. Xenos walked past me, leaving the office, and I took a few deep breaths, letting them out slowly to collect myself again. The nerve…arrogance, rather than confidence. It was a family trait.
When I left the offices, my mind spun with what Xenos had said. The nerve to talk to me about my personal life like that, even after I’d dismissed him! Despite his insubordinate actions, his words echoed in my mind.Fight for what you want.
I was a fighter, but this wasn’t a fight I knew I could win. What if I lost? Losing a battle was a knock to my ego, but losing Nylah would be a knock to my heart.
Still, Xenos and Ailey hadn’t been fated, and they were incredible. Could Nylah and I be like that? Hell, who was I kidding? We’d been like that for five centuries. Not a couple, perhaps, but I’d loved her for most of my life. Now that I didn’t have her, I knew it.
Everything we’d had, everything I loved about her, had disappeared when she’d lost her memory.
The moment I thought it, I knew it wasn’t entirely true. I’d felt that spark when I was around her. Underneath her confusion and her worry, the new life she had to go about living without her memories, without knowing who she was, she was still my Nylah. We had spent so many days together since she’d lost her memory, where we’d just talked and gotten to know each other again, and that attraction had still been there.
Nylah wasn’t gone.
Why was I?
I suddenly knew what I wanted. I knew what I had to do.
* * *
The tripback to the palace wasn’t a long one—with hovercrafts, it took no time at all, but it felt like I’d been away from Nylah for an eternity. I needed to get back to her as soon as I could.
When I arrived at the palace, I walked through the hallways.
“Dex?” Ellie asked, finding me on my way. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. “I’ll find you later and tell you, but right now, I have something to take care of.”
She frowned, looking worried.
“It’s the right thing to do, Ellie,” I said. “You know what it means to follow your heart, no matter how much it might hurt.”
Ellie’s face softened. She’d done so much for Ren when she’d first met him. She’d been willing to leave him to spare him—twice. She knew what it was to do the right thing, no matter what it might mean in the long run.
Would Nylah and I be together forever? I didn’t know what the future held. Would her vision come true, and would we be ripped apart? Maybe.
I just didn’t want to spend another moment away from her. I’d rather have her for a short while than never have her at all. I was a fool to have left in the first place.
