81. Veyka

We were alone. Suddenly. Finally.

A few measly feet separated us, and yet I could have sworn we stood on opposite sides of the void. Arran had played nice. So had I. But it was always going to come to this.

"You are afraid," he said. No accusation. A truth given, by the male who could see into my soul as easily as his own.

Given and received.

"Of course, I am." My voice did not shake. The last hour had been a tempest, and now I stood in the eye of the storm. "Every day, every minute in your presence is a reminder of what I stand to lose."

Tell me I have not lost you. Tell me that you love me.

But my mind was silent. A howling void.

Arran, my Arran, looked at me as if he were trying to figure me out. As if he did not know or understand me at all.

He shook his head slowly, dark locks nearly freed from the que at the back of his head. "You are queen. You cannot be selfish—"

"Do not dare. Not you. Not after all of this." My restraint was slipping. My sanity. The void was calling and soon I would go. "Everything I have done has been for Annwyn. Even at the cost of you."

A low growl. "I do not understand."

My heart was already broken. What did it matter if I smashed it into a few more pieces?

"What if I had not left?" I whispered. "What if the first thing you'd seen upon waking in Avalon had been my face?" I had asked myself those questions again and again. Sleeping, waking, with every inhale and exhale, I asked the Ancestors and the void, "Would you have remembered?"

He stared at me, assessing. A battle to be fought, a foe to be unraveled. Not his mate or his love.

"I don't know," he finally said.

Neither did I. But I supposed it did not matter. I reached for the dagger on the table, angled my leg so the scabbard strapped to my leg was visible and slid it home. My fingers grazed over the jeweled scabbard, so intricate. One of the sacred trinity. Important. But useless to this moment, and to my true fate.

I could not bring myself to meet Arran's eyes as I said, "It is my fault."

"You could not have known. Not with the scabbards."

It was an easy mistake to make. I was touching one, after all. "Not that. Yes, that, actually."

Arran stepped closer. The scent of him—earth and spice and warmth, such heady warmth… it made me want to throw aside everything. To throw him down and forget reality.

"I do not blame you," he said quietly.

I almost gave in then. I almost let myself be the coward he'd once accused me of being. I was so, so afraid. Because at least now, I had some shred of him.

"But you should," I said softly.

I forced myself to look into his eyes as I finally told him the truth, the one I'd held back in every conversation since he'd awoken. "My void power is the reason the succubus has returned."

He did not move. Did not understand. I had already told him this, in the dungeons of Castle Chariot. But it was more than fact that motivated me. It was the gaping hole those facts had left in my soul.

"I planned to leave after I avenged Arthur. I was going to leave Baylaur, leave Annwyn, travel to some distant continent where I could live out my powerless days in peace, without bringing ruin down upon my kingdom. But I fell in love with you."

I turned over my palm, as if I could see the place where Merlin had slashed my flesh.

"I stayed. I joined my blood with yours and awakened the void power, and doomed my kingdom. I gave the succubus a way back in. That is why they hunt me, Arran. Why even the mindless, soulless shells of bodies are drawn to me. Because it is my fault. All of it is my fault."

My fault.

I thought it with every breath.

My fault.

Knew it with every beat of my heart.

Arran dropped a hand to the head of his battle axe. The Brutal Prince—a place of safety for him. I should have expected what he said next.

"Then go to war. Go to war to protect them."

Nothing for me. Nothing about me. No words of comfort—because I did not deserve them. All of it was my fault. "So that more of my subjects can die for me and my mistakes?"

"The succubus is coming," Arran said. "You may not have a choice."

I laughed at that, a sound as cold and broken and empty as the void that I was quickly becoming. "I have never had many choices. And when I have, I've always seemed to choose wrong."

Arran did not reach for me. He did not offer anything. I understood, I really did. We had lost months that felt like lifetimes. Memories and trials that we may never regain. It had been a blessing, if a fleeting one. Borrowed time.

But if I kept reaching out for him, if I kept waiting, I would chip away until there was nothing left. And if it were just for me, that would have been enough. But Annwyn depended on me. I would not fail them again.

"I won't beg you to love me, Arran," I said. And even though I hated the Ancestors, I sent up a genuine prayer of thanks that my voice did not break. "But I do love you. Even this fucked up version. And if I have to spend the next thousand years without seeing love in your eyes, I will pay that price. Because I made a vow. A thousand years and a thousand more."

Not the vow we'd made before Annwyn. The one whispered in the secret waters of the faerie pools the night we'd consummated the mating bond between us.

Arran stared at me like the world was ending. In some ways, it was. This world, our world, the one we'd made between us, was shrinking away to nothing with every second. What emerged on the other side would never be the same.

I walked to the corner. Waited. Filled a glass of wine. Waited. Drank it. Waited.

I turned back to my mate.

"Perhaps it would be better if we went our separate ways."

No reaction.

"I can return to Baylaur. Deal with my mother, dispatch the elemental forces."

No movement.

"You can tend to Cayltay. The war camps, the forge. Maybe it would be better than this."

Only those endless black depths, where I could have lost myself forever.

"Anything would be better than this," I whispered.

My fingers began to tingle. My arms. The golden thread was there, would always be there, to keep me from fully letting go. But when the void pulled, when the ember of power inside of me blazed to life, I did not fight it.

I did not let myself imagine that there was a low growl there, at the edge of my consciousness, before I disappeared.

And if that was my name on his lips, I did not want to hear it. Not as I gave myself to the yawning emptiness inside of me and slipped away. As the voids of darkness welcomed me home.