Chapter 54

Shoulder leaned against the windowsill, I push the filthy curtain aside and look out upon the moonlit night, scouring the cobbled street three stories below my room that smells like a brewery.

A man wobbles past, pausing in the middle of the road to flop his cock out and take a piss, whistling a tune to the sky, belting out the chorus in slurred, broken notes. He walks straight through his own puddle to continue on his way, weaving a crooked path through the cramped neighborhood.

Cindra strides into view, dressed in her fake merchant’s robe that drags along the ground behind her, white dreaded hair hanging down her back. She glances up at my window and gives me a curt nod, face tight. Three men follow, each pulling a cart piled high and covered with furs.

Three—not the eight the last mail sprite suggested would be coming on that barge.

“Fuck,” I mutter, peeling the curtain further back so I can check down the street for stragglers.

All I can see is the empty road that weaves deeper into the city.

“Please no …”

My pulse goes wild, and I whip my head around, looking at her tucked amongst my crumpled sheets—hair a tangled mess spilled across the pillow, her tortured expression lit by a single lantern hanging off the wooden headboard.

She thrashes her head, hands reaching for nothing as a shrill cry splits her lips. “D-Don’t take him. Please—”

I charge across the room in two strides and drop onto the bed. Leaning against the headboard, I stretch my arm over the back of it. Face crumbling, she blindly pads at my chest, another whimper ripping free as she grabs my shirt, using the fisted grip to pull herself close—clawing at me like she’s hanging off the edge of a cliff. Like I’m the only thing stopping her from plunging.

Leg threading over mine, she fits herself to me, and slowly—so fucking slowly—I let my arm settle upon her back.

“I … I can’t do this again.” Her murmured words attack my chest. “Please—I can’t. Take me instead …”

My blood roars, crackling through my veins.

Take me instead …

I draw my chest full, hold it, force the wild surge back down, cracking my neck.

I uncurl her fist from where it’s clenching my shirt like she thinks I’ll ever leave, prying the material from her iron grip.

Another whimper. “No—no, no, no …”

The hurt curdling her sound tills imbalance in my chest.

Stare stabbed at the room’s only exit not far from the foot of my bed, I bring her tight, trembling fist up to my mouth and nuzzle my nose against it, easing it loose as I draw on the rich, spicy scent of amber sweetened with a floral pinch. “Once upon a time, there was a boy who had everything,” I rumble, then kiss the tip of her thumb. “Until someone he cared about found an unbreakable love that broke her.”

Broke everything.

I swallow and clear my throat before kissing the tip of Orlaith’s pointer finger as another whimper splits apart her trembling lips.

“The boy learned that love destroys.”

She nuzzles deeper into my chest, her tremble melting away when I drag my nose up the length of her middle finger.

Kiss the tip.

“That boy became a man with nothing left to lose,” I murmur, planting a kiss on the tips of her two smallest fingers. “Until he did.”

Her sobs lose strength, as if part of her is listening.

I think back to that day—when I replaced Baze in the training room to knock some sense into her. I remember her cutting through my shirt with her blade. The look in her eyes when she thought she’d wounded me, like it mattered to her.

Something more than just protective instinct sparked inside me. A flame I wanted to immediately douse.

I hate you.

Oh, precious. You don’t even know the meaning of the word.

I look down at her face tipped to the side, her warm breath skating over my thin shirt. “He did what he knew best.” Brushing the hair back from her cheek, I watch her lashes flutter. “He destroyed.”

Destroyed it before it could destroy her.

But …

“It didn’t change her fate like he’d hoped,” I dredge out, dragging my thumb across her lower lip. “Didn’t save her. And though she was tied to him inexplicably, he lost her in all the important ways.”

I thread my fingers through her hair, tip her head the slightest amount. Pretend she’s looking up at me with those heartbreak eyes I want to piece back together again.

“But that didn’t stop him.”

It would never stop him.

“Because he was hers—forever—even though he knew his love was lethal.”

He was hers.