Page 55

Chapter 55

Kat

“Don’t go to his room,” Mary silently pleads with me. “We can leave now. We can go to Vandermore Manor tonight.”

“He believed me. I saw it in his face. I’m perfectly safe,” I mouth back.

She gives me such a look of pain I almost give in right then, just to see the worry leave her eyes. Then I think of the people I failed tonight. Jack, his sister, and that poor woman. My resolve hardens.

“I’m going to be fine. He isn’t going to hurt me.”

Not yet.

Before she can protest any more, I grab the shawl at the bottom of the basket we’d prepared. The basket that saved my life. I didn’t have time to put on the shawl before he burst into the kitchen. I take it now and wrap it around my shoulders like a shield as I make my way to our bedroom.

Rahk is washing his face when I enter. He looks up, and between the long, wet strands of his hair, there is a fierceness in his eyes I have not seen before. He’s discarded his clothes in favor of the same soft trousers he wore last night and a loose black shirt with laces he hasn’t bothered tying, leaving his torso partially exposed.

I tug my shawl closer around my shoulders and would have marched straight to my side of the bed, pulled the covers over my head, and frozen him out for scaring all of us so much. Instead, he prowls across the room, intercepting me.

My back hits the wall as he snatches my jaw, forcing me to look up at him while his gaze burns into my face. “What are you doing?” I demand. “You haven’t had enough of frightening the daylights out of me today?”

His voice is shaking with anger. “I thought I’d lost you.”

Be clueless. Be confused.

Lie, lie, lie.

“Why would you have lost me?” I laugh uneasily. Now I’m shaking too. “I was just in the kitchen. Why did this spook you so much? You’re not yourself.”

Rahk’s hands slide to hold my head, his fingers touching the short, dark strands of my hair. His voice comes out in a growl. “I was in Faerieland. I saw someone there. A woman on a horse. She looked just like you.”

Everything inside me plunges to the floor. I try to think fast, to react how I would if I didn’t know exactly what he meant. “Edvear said you were with Lord Oliver!”

“I deceived you,” he admits. His forehead comes to rest against mine, his breath panting against my mouth. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to worry. I return to Faerieland often. There is business for me there. But when I saw that woman, it scared me to death. When I came back, and you weren’t here—”

“Rahk. It’s alright.” I try to say it gently as I reach up and cup his face. He leans into my touch, closing his eyes, releasing a shudder. “I’m here. I’m safe.”

He swallows hard. “I’m sorry. I just—I thought I lost you, Kat.”

His words drive knives into my gut. I fight the knot rising in my throat. My voice cracks. “You know we will lose each other, one way or another.”

“I know,” he growls.

Then his lips are on mine, his weight pressing into me. Rahk is always collected, controlled, and rational. But this kiss is scribed in desperation. He holds me like I might crumble through his fingers and be carried away in the wind. I kiss him back, wrapping my arms around his neck and pulling him to me with my own equal measure of desperation. I love him and I hate that I love him but there is no stopping it. I love him—my hunter and my husband. He will destroy me as I destroy him.

And if my death must come at the hands of a fae, then I long for it to be Rahk’s.

His touch is comfort I do not deserve after leaving those three people behind. Still, I lean into it, holding tight to his embrace, letting myself be swallowed up in his bigness. This is the only place I feel safe, and it kills me to know that this safety will be gone sooner than I expect.

Tell him you are leaving. Tell him, Kat.

I cannot. I cling tighter to him instead.

“You make me want to give up everything and stay in these cursed human lands with you,” Rahk snarls softly in my ear, “even if it shortens my lifespan.”

I stiffen in his arms. “Shortens your life span?”

“You didn’t know?” Rahk breathes softly onto my forehead. “It is not our blood that gives us long life. It is the magic in the air. The less I breathe that air, the shorter my life is.”

I pull back in alarm. “Has your life already been shortened by the weeks you have spent here?”

He shrugs, then draws me back to himself with a soft groan. “Maybe. A few years—a decade at most.”

As if a decade is nothing. As if I am not actively sucking away his lifeforce right this moment.

“You must go back to Faerieland immediately,” I say, untangling myself from his arms even as he gives a small measure of resistance. “You should stay there and only come here when you must! How can you be careless with your life?”

He lets me forcibly push him several steps toward the door. Then he plants his heels and refuses to go any further.

“Rahk!” I protest. “You’ve got to go back!”

He brings his face down to my level, his black eyes piercing through me, his hand catching my wrist. “Stop this, Katherine.”

The knot in my throat thickens until I can hardly breathe. “I cannot have you suffering or dying. I won’t allow it. And I will not be the reason for it.”

He purses his lips. “I am afraid it is far too late for that, my darling.”

He pulls me into a kiss, and for the first time, the way he holds my face and my waist, the way his mouth moves against mine, is possessive. He claims me with this kiss. Then my fire returns to me, and I claim him back. This is my husband. He may not be mine for much longer, but for this small moment, he belongs to me and no one else.

Breaking our kiss, he cups my cheeks so softly, his eyes running over every inch of my face. “Do you want me to go? Do you want me to return to Nothril?”

Tell him a lie.

Tears gather in my eyes. I shake my head miserably.

Something sparks to life in his expression. Hope . “Do you love me, Kat?”

My lips part, my tongue frozen. If I tell him that I do love him, he will find a way for us to be together—a way that will destroy his life, his heart, and his entire future. I cannot let him do that to himself. I thought I could take this one precious moment and keep it, but now I see that is selfish of me.

I must break him now, to save him. He will despise me. And maybe, when he finally hunts me down, that hatred will make it easier for him to kill me.

“I know you are holding back from me,” he whispers softly. “I have known from the beginning. I do not know what it is, but I must. Once and for all. Deny it, Kat.”

“Deny what?”

“Deny that you love me.”

Pressure builds in my chest. This is not fair. I—

The heat of his lips brushes over my forehead. “Look me in the eye, Kat, and tell me that you don’t love me. Lie to me, Kat. Lie to me. You’ve done it many times. So do it again. Tell me that when I catch you staring at me, it’s not because you have feelings for me. Tell me that when I come close and your cheeks turn pink, it’s not because my nearness affects you. Tell me that the tears you fight right now—tell me they are not because you care.”

“I’m not answering that question,” I growl, angry and defensive and too heartbroken to either admit the truth or lie again.

“Then you’re a coward.”

“Am I?” I push away from him, my voice rising. “Or maybe I just don’t like the rules you’ve set up for this game. Would you believe me if I said no? Would you believe me if I said yes? Or would you just call me a liar and believe whatever you want to?”

Rahk throws up his hands, pacing away and then back, dragging his curled fingers through his hair. “I want the truth! I want you to be honest with me!”

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do—

I close my eyes. Giving up. My voice shakes. “Do you truly want the truth?”

Rahk does not answer. I open my eyes to find that uneasiness has overtaken his features. But what am I to do? He demands I be honest with him. My heart demands the same thing.

So I manage to choke out: “I care deeply about you, Rahk.”

Every part of his face suddenly lifts.

“But our marriage can never work,” I finish. My vision goes blurry. I curse it.

The muscles of his throat contract and flex. “Why? Tell me a reason that is insurmountable.”

My breath releases in a shudder. “There is an insurmountable reason. But I cannot tell you what it is.”

“Why not?”

I can already feel him retreating from me. I can feel his regret already bubbling up inside him. The regret that tells him he should have listened to me when I told him I was a curse to him.

“Because it is a secret that belongs to others beyond me,” I say. “I have longed, from the very beginning, to confide in you about it . . . but I cannot.”

He turns his back to me, releasing a long, low exhalation. He rakes a hand through his long hair.

I hate this distance between us. This fear and the growing cavernous hole in my chest. I press the heel of my palm to my cheeks, trying to smear away the traitorous wetness.

The distance is good, I try to tell myself. You need this. He needs this. It hurts, but this is the only way you can keep from destroying him completely.

His shoulders rise and fall with his deep breath. “How long must you keep this secret?”

I stand where I am, longing for him to crush me to his chest, to tell me that it doesn’t matter what the secret is, that he loves me and no obstacle is too great.

“How long, Kat? A month? A year? A decade? Longer?”

The tears come in earnest now. “I can never tell you.”

Rahk’s mouth flattens as his nostrils flare. “So you have a secret that you cannot tell me—ever—that will always come between us? Our entire marriage, when I have made my feelings clear to you repeatedly, you have always known that it will never work between us.”

“I never wanted it to be this way,” I insist. The knife carving out my heart hurts vastly more than I ever dreamed it could. “Please know that. If I were at liberty to explain, I would tell you everything.”

He stares at me for several minutes. Then he goes to the bed and sits down. He rubs a hand down his neck, his jaw working. I want to go to him, to try to erase the lines between his brows, to soothe the tension from his arms and shoulders.

I want to take the pain from him. Mine already is unbearable, so what is more? I continue to be the curse to those who care about me. If I could ease his pain, I would.

“Well, I suppose I ought to say I have been keeping a secret of my own,” Rahk says with a humorless chuckle. “You have done the noble thing to push me away while keeping yours. I’m afraid I have not been so noble. Perhaps this is my repayment of that selfish evil. You must forgive me.”

He means the secret of him hunting the Ivy Mask. The Ivy Mask, who he believes I love for rescuing my mother. He must have assumed I would hate him if he told me.

I shrug, chewing mercilessly on the inside of my cheek. I do not trust my voice.

When Rahk speaks, he sounds like the distant, taciturn Nothril prince I first came to know. “Thank you for explaining. Now that we understand one another, we can move forward in a way that makes sense.”

Maybe I should make myself cold like him. I can build a fortress around my heart to protect its tender wounds.

It’s like losing Mama again, I think bitterly. Your choices are to pretend you don’t care, or be completely destroyed.

Rahk gets to his feet. I expect him to storm out of the room, but instead he comes to where I stand by the vanity, my fingers knotting together, my breath a shuddery whisper. Oh so gently, he touches my chin, tilts my jaw up. He presses the softest of kisses to my forehead.

Then he leaves.