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A ghost of something—not quite a smile, but close—flickers across her face. “Ask your question, then.”

“Why haven’t you confronted me about the night of the ceremony? About what you heard me say to Erik?”

She’s silent for so long I wonder if she’ll answer at all. When she finally speaks, her voice is flat, devoid of emotion. “There’s nothing to ask. You made yourself clear.”

“Did I?”

“You wanted to humiliate me, and you did.” She shrugs, a small, defeated gesture. “But then, my mother’s death upstaged whatever hurt you wanted to cause me.”

The accusation knocks the breath from my lungs. “Is that how you see me? As someone who would deliberately hurt you? Who would want to humiliate you?”

“I don’t know what to think of you anymore, Griffin.” She looks at me now, truly looks at me for the first time since she got here. “I’m just tired of being forced to live.”

The words are torn from her, raw and honest in a way that pierces straight through all my carefully constructed walls. Now I can see it: the precipice she’s standing on, the yawning darkness beckoning her closer with each passing day.

I’m losing her. Not just as my mate, but entirely. She’s fading before my eyes, slipping away into shadows I can’t pull her back from.

“Let me ask you something else,” I say carefully. “If you loved someone but found out that staying with them would kill them, what would you do?”

Wariness replaces the emptiness in her gaze. “I’d leave.”

“And if you discovered that being mated to me would kill me, what then?”

She stiffens. “I wouldn’t be mated to you.”

“That was my answer, too.” The admission costs me more than she knows. “The prophecy the witch told us in the woods—it wasn’t just meaningless words. She said you would die if we completed our bond. That I would be the cause of your death.”

Maya stares at me, shock written clearly across her face. “What?”

“I pushed you away to save your life,” I continue, the words spilling out after being held back for so long. “I couldn’t mark you as my mate knowing it might kill you. So, I made a choice—your life over our bond.”

She shakes her head slowly, processing this new information. “If that were the case, you could have talked to me. But you didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t,” I admit. “I thought I was protecting you.”

“You clearly didn’t see me as an equal,” she says, hurt and anger finally breaking through her apathy. “Someone worthy of making her own choices.”

“I was wrong,” I acknowledge. “I thought I was saving you, but I lost you anyway.”

She looks away, back to the ruins of the place she once called home. “You should have told me.”

“I know that now.”

A silence stretches between us, less tense than before but still fragile.

“Maya,” I begin, but she shakes her head.

“Don’t,” she says quietly. “I don’t even know what to think about what you just said. Just go. Please.”

There is no hint of rudeness in her tone.

I’ve given her something to think about, so I decide to leave. As I reach the pathway back to the palace, I pause, my enhanced hearing catching the soft sounds of her eating. It’s something. A small victory in a war I’m terrified of losing.

I make a mental note to speak with Jerry about the change in her scent. Something is wrong beyond the obvious emotional distress, and I won’t lose her to an illness we could have prevented.

The midday sunbeats down on the palace training grounds as Erik and I circle each other, wooden practice swords held at the ready. We’ve been at this for over an hour, sweat soaking through our training clothes, muscles burning pleasantly with exertion. It’s been too long since we’ve sparred like this—like brothers rather than king and commander.

We may be shifters, but there are certain situations in which shifting isn’t an option. We need to be able to use weapons as well.