Page 58 of Antiletum (The Nocturne #1)

That hope thrived, even as miles from an unsuspecting Delaney the next night, a tall, dark haired boy—tresses slashed unevenly by a blade—fell before her father’s feet.

Beaten, bruised, and bloody. Even as their father forced Rainah to watch as he cut that boy’s neck, bleeding him dry.

Forced a cup full of moonwater down his daughter’s throat.

Growled in her ear, “You want to protect your sister? Then show her what she’s done. ”

Delaney’s hope lived, that Sebastian might get away. Right up until the moment that Rainah’s clairvoyance floated to her in a dream, delivering an image of proof: the consequences of her actions.

And, in a way, she died right along with him while she sobbed alone in the dark in a foreign and empty room, curled into herself. Utterly alone. No one to hold or comfort her through her heartache. Resigning herself to accept the unending lonely life waiting for her at home.

Because in her mind, she deserved nothing more.

Present

Val pulls his gaze from the chipped and fading paintings of owls, foxes, and caracals decorating above our heads in the small spirlinary , the shadow of cypress trees drawing black pictures on the floor.

He stares at me pointedly. As he has so many times since we wed.

My vision turns hazy, salty fluid burning, spilling down my cheeks. And I’m terrified of what I know that my husband is about to say .

“Delaney. It’s me. My name was Sebastian.” Val utters that name. Effortlessly. Like it’s been floating around on his tongue for all of his life.

Because it has been.

The very name that I’ve kept cradled near to my heart. The name that, for years, I would only allow myself to say when calling it into a mirror—using offerings of moonwater and flesh and blood and tears to amplify my necromancy—trying to bring his face back before mine, even from beyond.

But he never came.

The true reason why is right before my eyes, falling apart as thoroughly as I am. And it has not a single thing to do with him refusing to be summoned by the person who brought about his demise.

Valledyn— Sebastian —stares at me, witnessing the truth settle over me like the lid of my coffin after all these months of refusing to see him.

Sad.

Just like when I first ran into him on that fateful day.

Grabbed his arm, asked for help, and altered the course of our lives forever.

It’s so clear now, my precious denials were weak and foolish.

Refusing to accept that the person I had been hurting for over the course of a decade was, indeed, still impossibly alive.

Right in front of me. And I couldn’t allow myself to simply reach out and take him.

At some point, I’ve gravitated forward in order to lean against the abandoned altar. To keep myself standing. Closer to him.

“How?” I’m too dizzy, my stomach rolling fiercely, grit from the altar digging into my palms. “I thought you were dead.”

“I told you it wasn’t the end,” Val says quietly, occupying the window bench with one long leg bent at the knee, resting an arm over it.

His wedding ring winks at me in the moonlight.

“I told you—For you… For you I’d change the world.

” He stumbles over his words a bit, like he often does when he’s nervous.

Just like he did that very first day, when he tried to compliment my eyes.

Likening them to eyelets that amplify the intricate beauty of nature.

Val stands from his bench, taking a single slow step towards me. “I’m sorry it took so long. To make it back to you.”

My hand covers my mouth, hardly able to breathe.

Our need to spill our truths, to relive the past, has flipped. Me now silent and Val’s flowing like a thunderous waterfall. Powerful enough to swallow me in its current. To hurl me over its edge.

“After I followed your carriage to The Citadel, as my owl, I then flew nearby to try to recover myself. I didn’t know what to do. But then Llewellyn ven’Sol came along. I told you, he was a tracker. Same as my brother.”

Val gives me a sad smile. Because his father and brother weren’t his family at all. At least not by blood.

“Him, Heath, and Blair had just made it to Omnitas for my father to take over the role of Alter . He found me in that park. Coaxed me down to talk to him, offered me a different life. A chance to change the world. Use my magic to fulfill a generations-in-the-making coup—masquerading as his bastard son. And I took his offering. Without thought. Renamed and remade myself. Because that was my way back to you.”

An internal bruise aches within me, the remorse I’ve nurtured for my angry words about Val’s father when we first fought. Seeing now just how conflicted he may be about the man who took him in based on what Val could offer.

He takes another step closer to my frozen frame, overtaken by the past and the present and all of my grief. All tied to him, for endlessly different reasons .

“I didn’t know until recently that you thought I was dead. That Rainah told you I was dead. She never bothered to correct herself. And that is what made me choke the life from her. More than the threat of having to make her my wife.”

Val’s betrayal brought by my sister is clear across his face.

Disbelieving. Endlessly agonized. “She knew . She knew for years, just as well as my father, who I was and what we were to each other. And neither of them let me know that my father had a decoy brought before yours to be slaughtered. Forgotten. And you were needlessly whittling away at yourself with your mourning and your guilt. All alone. If I’d known… ”

Val shakes his head, voice clogging with emotions, his eyes steadily becoming glassier.

“He had been on the search for people like us for years. Necromancers. But I kept your secret. Never told anyone. I tried to lie to my father. About being aware of your magic when after two years of being kept apart, I told him I didn’t care what he said and he couldn’t stop me from seeing you anymore.

That was when he told me he had originally been tracking you when your scent separated from your family’s trail.

And I was too smitten to realize we were being followed, my senses dulled with how wonderfully overwhelmed I was by you.

He told me I had to keep waiting. It was the only way to keep you safe.

That if your necromancy was revealed before the time was right, Parliament would kill you.

And the years just kept slipping by. So I took that time.

Building myself up. Making myself into a man that could deserve you. ”

Another slow step. A loud sob falls from my lips, unable to keep it all in.

“But it turns out, I haven’t earned you at all.

” An anguished epiphany falls across Val’s face.

“I’ve wondered for months how different things might have been.

Had I not been so selfish. If my first instinct hadn’t been to kiss you, but to show you who I am as well.

If you would have known I was out there.

That I never left you here alone. I was fighting for you, the whole time.

I was never gone. And I was always yours.

I’d hoped maybe you’d recognize me, that you’d know me anyway.

At our wedding. And for a moment, I thought you did. ”

The way Val clung to me after our wedding, when we made it to our room, slinks across my memory.

How instead of trying to bed me again, without the witness of self-sacrificing priestesses, he held me close.

Promised me I was safe. That I had him and he had me.

That he would forever take care of me and no one could stop him.

The desperation behind it was mind boggling at the time.

It all makes sense now.

I can’t make myself voice that he was right.

That I did know him when I saw him, draped in wedding garb and waiting for me at the Heartstone.

Beautiful and mine in the moonlight. But I had convinced myself I was imagining what I wanted to see.

What could have been with the person I chose as mine before we were stolen away from each other.

“When I woke up alone, I knew I was wrong.” Val’s dark eyes sparkle with his tears, unshed and pooling in his black eyes. “I should have been honest with you the way you were me. Right here.”

Val gestures to our spirlinary .

“Because I think I already knew who you were, even before you showed me.” He takes another step towards me. “On that perfect day.” And another. “When we fell in love.” One more. “And you brought me back to life.”

Val is standing right in front of me now, and I don’t know if I want to scream or flee or fall to pound my fists on the ground while I continue to cry.

I don’t know if I want to wrap my arms around him or myself and weep in joy or sadness or shove him away.

Slap him across his face and tell him he has no right.

Not after everything he’s put me through. Everything he’s done.

Val reaches his hand into his pocket, bringing my voice back.

“Don’t!” I cry with a jagged, panicked sob, cruel knowledge hitting me at this second, knowing exactly what’s been hidden in there. The object I’ve been so curious about every time his hand gets lost to reach for his mysterious crutch.

Val doesn’t listen. He pulls out his fist. Unfurls it to reveal the little golden clasp I placed in his unwashed hair. Etched with faded dahlias, the flowers nearly disappeared with how he’s worn them away. And he doesn’t ask for permission as he secures it back against my head.

“I’m sorry it took me so long,” he says again.

“I’m sorry for everything I did, when I learned how much you were hurting.

All those years I stayed away, I thought I was keeping you safe.

You weren’t safe. And I snapped. Knowing how they failed you.

How I failed you. But it’s no excuse. I’m no better than them. ”

Val’s hands fall on my shoulders.

“Don’t go,” he pleads. “Don’t go to the manor. Stay with me, Delaney. Choose me. It was always going to be you. It always will. Choose me again. Like we chose each other then. Right here .”

And that, that desperate request, I cannot stand, realizing that he’s right. That we’ve found ourselves in the exact spot where he kept my face between his palms and gave me my first kiss. Where we decided that we belong to only each other, just as he’s been telling me for months.

Where it all ended. And where it began.

“I would do anything for you, and I did too much. Ruined everything that we had. I know that. I fucked up. But I can do better. I promise, I can be better. I can love you the way you deserve. Let me. Let me try.”

My face falls in my hands, my shoulders heaving because I can’t breathe. Nor can I make myself leave.

“I’m sorry,” Val chokes, the apology heavy with much more than the distance of time. He leans forward, his spine, his posture crumbling. His forehead falls to mine, keeping us both upright, his face crushed against my hands where I fail to physically hold my tears inside.

“I’m sorry. I can do better,” he says again.

Rougher. Quieter.

“Delaney.” I’ve never heard a more pleading sound. Afraid. His hands on either side of my head. “Look at me. Please, look at me.”

I can’t do it. My palms press deeper into my eyes. Willing him to go away. Leave me here and let me break.

He does no such thing.

Instead Val’s arms wrap around my back. “Please.”

His face nuzzles into my neck. And even though I can’t bring myself to look at him, to pull my hands away from my eyes and face this unkind reality, I’m weak. I can’t help it. Head tilting to the side, I allow him deeper into my neck, savoring his breath against my body.

Alive.

I can feel his lips moving against the rapid pulse in my throat as he speaks, delivering his regrets straight into my skin. “I’m sorry.” Hard. Angry. His fury directed at himself. “I’m so sorry.”

Val slowly slides down my body with his forehead against me, apologizing on his whole slow descent. He willingly rests on his knees at my feet. Touching me unabashedly because he needs to be close. And I need it too. Just as much as I need him away .

Val’s arms lock around my waist, clutching me tighter than anyone has ever deigned to do before. Digging into my spine. Like if he doesn’t hold tight, I might float away.

His breath is hot through my dress. “I’m so sorry. Forgive me,” Val’s voice is muffled, buried into my stomach. “Please. Forgive me.”

My hands finally fall from my face to hang limp at my sides, unable to bring them around him like I want to do. To sink into his hair that I had wanted so badly to touch. That I now have, completely reserved.

He only holds me tighter, breath heavier against my body, his face completely lost to me.

“Don’t leave me, Delaney. Please. Don’t leave me. You’re all I’ve ever wanted.”

And at that, I raise my hands, holding them up before I do hit him.

Before I clutch to him as desperately as he does me.

It’s a harrowing moment. As my husband, the lost love of my childhood, cries into my stomach, begging me to stay after all his crimes, cutting me apart.

I cry too. Loud and hysterical. I look up at the chipped and faded paintings of the Nocturne on the ceiling.

Silently asking why they would ever want to create life when life is nothing but pain.

The face of a barn owl stares back at me. Wise and knowing. Deep and soulful, and the sight of it makes me want to vomit.

“I have to go,” I say abruptly. Nearly indiscernible.

“Don’t go,” Val gasps, not moving from his position, his fingers digging into my lower back. “Please. Please. Just stay. Let me—”

My body finally accepts my brain’s command to be dragged from where I’m rooted. I twist away from Val, pushing at his shoulders to loosen his hold. He falls forward, hands flat on the floor.

“Delaney.”

His absence leaves my front, wet with his tears, instantly cold, putting him at my back, alone on the ground .

“Delaney!”

My steps are hurried, racing towards the exit, unable to turn to my husband still on his hands and knees, doing the opposite of what he begged: leaving him behind.