Page 52

“When she used to braid her hair in the mornings,” he went on, softer now. “She’d tell me the story of how she and my father found each other. How fate made it perfect. But after he disappeared? She stopped telling the stories.”

Lyra swallowed, hard. “I’m sorry.”

“I swore I’d never be that selfish,” he whispered. “Swore I’d never take someone’s heart and leave them hollow.”

She stepped forward, anger swirling with grief. “But that’s what you’re doing now, Jace. You’re punishing me for something that hasn’t evenhappened.”

He looked up at her, wounded and furious and so very raw. “I’m trying to protect you.”

She shook her head. “No. You’re trying to control a future you can’t predict. And in the process, you’re doing the exact thing you’re afraid of. You’releavingme without ever really being here.”

She pressed her palms against his chest. “I never knew your father. And I don’t know you that well. But I can tell you that you’re not him. You’ve never abandoned your pack. Never let them down. And yet you’re so scared of love breaking you that you’d rather shove it away than let yourself be whole.”

He stared at her like she’d peeled him open with a whisper.

He grabbed her.

Kissed her like it was the last thing he’d ever get to do.

It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t patient. It was desperate and consuming and aching with every word he hadn’t said, every touch he’d denied them, every second of longing he’d buried under duty and pride.

Her hands slid into his hair.

She kissed him back. Because for one second, he wasn’t holding back. He washers.

And then, as before, he pulled away. Just like that.

Stepped back, breath ragged.

“I can’t,” he said again, brokenly.

Lyra’s heart shattered clean through.

“Then don’t come back,” she said, voice shaking. “Don’t kiss me and leave. Don’t keep giving me hope only to crush it with your fear.”

He looked like he wanted to say something.

She didn’t let him. She turned, skirts brushing the grass, and walked away—head high, shoulders tight, the sting in her eyes matching the fury in her chest.

She didn’t even glance toward Ezra.

Didn’t care.

Let him wonder where she went. Let Jace wonder what came next.

Because tonight she was done with both of them.

26

LYRA

Lyra’s heels clapped hard against the stone path, each step charged with the kind of fury that made lamplight flicker in her wake. The music from the Moonlight Festival faded behind her, replaced by the rush of wind and her own heartbeat thundering like a war drum.

She wasn’t crying.

She refused.

This wasn’t heartbreak.