Page 33

Chapter twenty-two

HYACINTH

Landers hadn’t come to bed last night. He’d left me standing in the war room with more questions than answers, and as I lay between the sheets and stared up at the ceiling I realized, for the first time, I was truly angry at him.

I didn’t expect to know every little thing about him, or for him to know every tiny detail about me, but the big things—I thought we had created a space between us where we could share the big things.

But I was wrong, and that knowledge hurt.

I groaned, pushing from bed and wrapping a blanket around my shoulders as I flicked my fingers toward the fireplace, waking the flames from their slumber.

I strode over to the arched glass doors of our bedchamber that led out onto the terrace and looked into the night that was slowly slipping from the sky.

Dawn was close, and I needed to be ready to leave at first light. The whooshing of the tether sounded and I could sense his presence before he materialized in the room, but I kept my eyes pinned to the glass.

“Hyacinth.” Landers’s voice rang softly throughout the room and I closed my eyes against the emotion it sent raging through my chest. “I am sorry.”

I let my eyes open, slowly turning to face him to find his gaze already on me, his features molded into a tortured expression.

“Where have you been?” I asked, the tone of my own voice matching the quiet of the room.

“At Asrai’s,” he answered, running a hand through his tousled hair. He looked . . . haunted . I’d never seen him so disheveled and unkempt.

I nodded, turning away from him as I let the blanket fall from my shoulders. “I need to get ready to leave,” I said, turning toward the bathroom.

“Hyacinth, please ,” he begged, and I stilled at the fear that plagued his voice. “Please give me a chance to speak.”

My body snapped toward him, curls flying over my shoulder with the movement as my eyes caught his. “You’ve had hundreds of chances, for months, Landers. You had your chance last night. But instead, you left me standing in the war room, alone .”

He ran another nervous hand through his hair.

“This is not something I know how to do.” His voice sounded erratic as he waved his hand between us.

“I have never had a partner—not like this. Never let anyone get close enough to see the parts of me that I have shown you. I do not know how to let anyone in, but I am trying.”

He clutched the back of the arm chair, wrapping his fist around it like he was struggling with the urge to throw it across the room.

“But, I want you . . . I need you to see me . To know every part of me. I crave to be loved by you, Hyacinth, for the man that I am, not the one I wish I could be.” Emotion cracked in his voice as the words fell from his lips like a plea for me.

His eyes met mine again with so much pain and fear shining there. He didn’t try to mask it, didn’t try to hide it from me like he always had.

Understanding flowed into my features as his words sunk in, the anger and resentment quieting as I looked up at him.

He had been afraid to tell me, and I’d been afraid to ask.

Both of our scars and fears had collided and neither of us had been willing to face the possibility of losing the other.

The trauma of our pasts was a wicked thing, working like the devil to keep us trapped inside of it—to push us apart.

I realized then, staring into his pain-steeped eyes, that the habits we had once learned to help us survive were now the only thing standing in the way of healing.

I let out a weighted breath as I took a step toward him.

“I don’t know how to do this either,” I whispered.

“You deserve love, Landers. You are worthy of it no matter what voice in your head screams that you aren’t.

And I deserve the truth, all of it. Without having to ask for it—to beg for it.

All I want is to love you in a way that doesn’t make you want to run from yourself. ”

I took another step closer, closing the distance between us as I reached up and slid my palm against his cheek.

“But I do know, if we don’t have truth, if we don’t have trust —we have nothing. Love, no matter how great it is, is not enough.”

He placed his hand over mine as I said the words, and I could see something in him shift. As if a veil had been pulled away from his skin, baring raw flesh.

The person looking back at me now wasn’t a King or a warrior, but a man as broken and haunted and scarred as I was, hoping that I could still love him, in spite of it all.

“Anything you want to know, I will tell you.” Landers said, letting his eyes and hand fall from mine.

I could feel the muscle in his jaw flex against my palm before I pulled it away and fell into the chair across from him. I exhaled a deep breath as he began to pace at the foot of the bed, then asked my first question.

“In Ammord, when you said that this”—I gestured my hand between us—“is not something you can give, did you say that because of what you are?”

“Yes. The curse does not allow me to have a mating bond.”

I nodded, pulling my knees up to my chest.

The moment I had seen him at the academy, I had felt a tug toward him—something pulling me in his direction.

It wasn’t until we arrived to Locdragoon that I had thought maybe it was a mating bond, but somehow, knowing that it wasn’t, brought me comfort.

Comfort in knowing that this love was ours.

We had chosen each other because we wanted to, not because the universe had predetermined it.

“Can you speak to Nithra like I can?”

“Yes.” He stopped pacing and turned toward me. “But I have only done so once, when she brought you to Ithia. That is how I knew her name when you asked me for it.”

A twinge of annoyance flared in my chest at the idea that she had also kept that from me. I swallowed, tucking a hair behind my ear. “Does Mara know what you are?”

He nodded. “Yes. All the leadership I fought with and against in the Great War know what I am. I was scared she would tell you, that you would learn this secret from her instead of me.”

“Do you . . .” I hesitated, digging my fingers into the fabric of the chair. “Shift every full moon like one of those wolf things?” I propped my chin on my knee and looked up at him just in time to see the small smirk that flickered across his lips.

“No. Moonwolves are only known to storybooks and lore; they do not exist to my knowledge. But this curse is different. Until you learn to control it, it controls you, and you will shift at the slightest change in emotion. I have to be very intentional about when I shift. If my emotions are too heightened, I risk not being able to shift back when I want,” he answered, pushing his hands into his pockets and leaning against the chair across from me.

That explained why he always seemed to keep himself unnervingly calm.

“Who taught you to control it?” Silence hung between us at the question.

“My mother,” Landers whispered after a few moments. “It is her lineage that holds this curse, but somehow, it did not affect her. She had patches of scales across her body that never changed, like she had been born in the midst of shifting and it somehow froze the curse for her.”

He let out a weighted sigh as he slipped into the chair and dragged his hands over his face.

“I always wished that she could shift, so she could have killed my father the first time he ever laid hands on her.”

“How did he handle it when he found out what you are?” I asked, my voice hushed.

He remained quiet for a few breaths, and I watched as he leaned back into his chair, the fire casting shadows across his features as he stared into it.

“He caged me and put that iron cage in a stone room so my flames could not burn anything he cared for.”

A chill ran down my spine as my gaze roved over him, his own eyes flickering with ghosts of past memories. The lines on his face deepened, revealing all the pain he hid from the world, all the grief he never let seep onto anyone else.

“Why iron?” I questioned, my brows furrowing as I pulled my knees tighter to my chest.

“It is a poison to dragons. If iron is touching them . . . if it is touching us , it blocks our magic and physically weakens our body and mind. Even if it is not touching us but in our presence for a prolonged period, we start to feel the symptoms.”

I’d always wondered why Nithra hadn’t broken out of the cage I found her in, how once she was out of it no arrows could pierce her flesh but yet had so many infected wounds.

It dawned on me then: nothing in Locdragoon was made of iron.

Everything was gold, even the prisons. There had been so many glaring signs and I’d missed them all.

I let my eyes fall to the window where the sun was threatening to peak over the horizon, and let out a sharp breath.

“I have one more question, for now—one more thing I need to know before I leave,” I said, as I slowly stood and stepped around my chair.

Landers gave a slight nod in response, watching me with careful eyes as I dug my fingers into the back of the chair.

“If I could learn the magic my grandparents used to create this curse, if I could find a way to take it from you, would you choose to be free of it?” He stared back at me for a long moment, studying me as he contemplated his answer.

“No,” he finally said. “I would not know who I am without it.” Sadness leaked into his irises as he stood and took a step toward me. “Does that change anything for you?”

I shook my head as I closed the small gap between us.

“No,” I whispered, pulling his hand into mine and brushing his knuckles against my lips. “It doesn’t.”