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Chapter twenty-nine

D evastating silence settled in my bones. Dread pricked at my heart and my neck as he looked down at me, face and jaw strained tight. I recoiled from him. All of me lost, alarmed and on guard—my stupid heart even more than my sense of self-preservation.

“What do you mean he’s not here?” I stumbled backwards.

“Don’t run.” He caught my wrists before I could fall and nodded towards the beach. “Please. Walk with me.”

But I ripped my wrists from his grasp so hard that the violent friction chafed my skin. It wasn’t smart to turn my back to him, but I did. I tore my heels off my feet and rushed towards the beach. Away from people, away from all the lights, away from him.

“I’m stupid,” I hissed through tearful eyes. “Stupid, stupid, stupid—”

“Ella!” His deep voice was right behind me the moment my feet touched cold sand.

But I turned on him, wielding a heel in one hand. I stumbled again, losing my balance from the cold sand gripping my bare feet. “Simeon’s not here?”

His hand flexed as if to reach for me. “No, but—”

“Were you going to give me up? Is someone…” I looked around, frantic. No one was near us save for a few passing Brinneans distracted by celebration. “Is someone here? Did you make a deal and—”

“No!” Coarse pain rippled through him. “Never.”

“Then I don’t understand—”

“I wanted you . Just you,” he insisted, hands open in supplication.

“That morning the temple went down, I was going to tell you the truth, but you said you wanted to go to Brinnea with me , and I am a selfish bastard, Ella,” he gritted out.

“I am not the one that gets to have you, not in this life.” His chest shuddered with emotion.

“But I couldn’t stay away, and I couldn’t let you go, so I took — I took time, I took these moments with you knowing they’re probably all I’ll ever get. ”

“Me,” I breathed, my chest split down the middle—confusion and distrust on one side, hope and love on the other. “You just wanted me ?”

“Yes.” Hesitantly, he reached for my hand.

My recoil this time was only slight, but I kept my distance.

“Are you really that surprised?” He huffed out a breath.

“You see how I look at you. You hear me talk to you. When we’re close, when we lie in bed together, you feel how I want you.

I gave up trying to hide what I feel for you long, long ago. ”

The air around my head began to thin. I wanted to accept it. Go back to dancing, to just being with him, but—

“Did you have something to do with the temple in Tovick?” I demanded shakily. “To—to get me out of there and get me alone?”

His face twisted with pain. “ No. ”

“You intercepted the others on your way here and you told them Simeon sent you.”

“He did send me. He sent me to retrieve you from Warrich and take you directly to those Caves.”

My stomach plummeted. But it had been Finn who revealed the plan to come to Brinnea, not Gavin .

“You told the others the plan was to go to Brinnea from the beginning, before you even knew me.” The air escaped my chest and left a cavern in its wake. “You would have had this plan before you even came to Warrich.”

“Yes,” he confessed. “I did.”

“There’s a difference between what I’ve been told to do and what I plan on doing.”

I shrunk back from him, remembering some of his first words to me. Words I had been too na?ve to question.

“If we hadn’t been in Tovick,” I choked out, “if Caz hadn’t been in Tovick—”

“I know.” Remorse flickered through him. “But those brothers knew what they were signing up for by volunteering to escort you from Warrich back to those Caves. They knew there were risks.”

A gust of wind carried frigid mist off the ocean and sent shivers through me.

“I would never have forced you to come to Brinnea, Aryella.” He moved slowly, carefully, as he tried to close the distance between us—like he was afraid I’d snap if he moved too fast. “You wanted to come here—”

“Under false pretenses!”

“Tell me you were ready to go to Elias Winterton!” Anger rumbled in his chest. “Tell me you didn’t want to come here with me !”

But I couldn’t tell him that. The time he gave me had allowed me to live, to train, to learn, to discover joy separate from the binds of the prophecy. Even if just for a few extra days or weeks. I was in no rush to get to those Caves, to my betrothed, and we both knew it.

“It doesn’t make any sense.” I ran my fingers over my face, through my hair, throwing his flower crown to the cold, sandy ground that bit at my bare feet. “You didn’t even know me! ”

Agony rippled in his eyes. He took another step toward me, reached for me, but I dodged his hand.

“Make it make sense, please!”

“I was not going to let Simeon throw you to his wolves with no defenses, with no training, no idea who you were or what you could do, with no strength, no…” he bit back the torment the memory gave him, “no food in your belly or life in your eyes, Ella—”

“It wasn’t your choice!”

“No, it wasn’t!” The power of his brutal shout silenced the air around us. Silenced me. “And if that makes me your villain, then so fucking be it!”

I folded my arms around myself and rubbed warmth into my own skin. Unbridled laughter—distant, foreign, and carefree—sounded from the tavern behind me.

“If I ask to go to the Caves, to Elias,” I began through chattering teeth, “right now, will you take me?”

Gavin flinched but nodded. “If that’s what you want.”

“You said you’ll kill Elias if he touches me,” I said, calling his bluff. To not be fooled again. “You said you’ll be his nightmare.”

“Not if it’s—” His chest heaved with angry breaths. His face paled, like it sickened him to say the words. “Not if he will make you happy.”

“Swear on my life.”

“Don’t—I won’t,” he stuttered, scowling. “Your life is not to be bargained with!”

“Swear it,” I commanded coldly. “On my life. That you would not, that you will not hold me here against my will.”

Like Simeon. Like Elowen. Like they both had done in Warrich without my knowledge. I had friends, a community, people , and they had kept me locked away.

“I swear it on—on your life.”

My chest splintered at the stumble he took over the words, as if speaking them cut into his soul. I knew how that felt.

“I will fight for your freedom and happiness if it’s the last thing I do, but…” His expression darkened with dread. “But do you want to go to him?”

“I have to.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“We can’t all do whatever we want.” The insult snapped out of me like the crack of a whip. When he opened his mouth to object, I held up my hand to stop him. “Don’t. I need to think. Go back to the inn.”

He shook his head. “You aren’t walking back alone.”

“I think I’ll survive without you for once.” My words were a finely honed blade slicing through us both.

“Aryella.” He offered me his hand. I wanted to take it, but I refused. “I’m not leaving you out here.”

“Then you will never see me again,” I answered coldly.

“I will find a way to get away from you. You will never touch me again. You will never speak to me again, and I will never forgive you.” I wanted to crumble and weep, but I didn’t.

I clenched my teeth and glowered at him instead.

“Do as I say, give me space, or I will choose to hate you for lying to me.”

The threat felt sour as it left my lips, but I knew it would work.

And it did.

His hand dropped to his side, defeat leveling the planes of his scarred, handsome face. I heard him shifting but refused to look up.

“Take this. It’s cold.” His black leather jacket brushed my arm. “Please take this, Ella, and know I’ll be waiting for you.”

Reluctantly, I accepted and put his coat over my fur shawl because it was large enough to fit. I watched him leave in the direction of the inn.

For a while, I stood completely still, numbly watching the reflections of lanterns and firelight off the ocean waves. Hearing the joyous sounds of solstice celebrations. Laughter, cheering, singing. All of it felt separate from me now.

The mist bit at my cheeks and ruffled my dampening hair so it rippled around me and stung my face.

His jacket, enveloping my body, blocked the shudders but couldn’t soothe the ache in my chest. Behind me, I heard the carefree laughter of children and turned toward the source.

Three of them—two young girls and a boy—skipped across and squealed down the cobblestone path waving thin wooden sticks that sparkled with hot, dancing light.

I smiled through the ache in my chest when the boy laughed.

The little boy laughed like Ollie.

I took in the children’s sweet, unworried faces bitten pink from the cold, filled with joy. I knew my choice remained the same.

Simeon had placed wards on this city as he had Tovick to protect these innocents.

But it wouldn’t last. Molochai was moving north, and he would eventually bear down on the last of Simeon’s defenses.

Then, nowhere would be safe, not even Brinnea.

Surely everyone in this world could not fit and survive in the Winterton Caves, if they could even be kept hidden from Molochai.

None of this good would last unless I did something about it.

I shouldn’t have let myself forget that, not for a single moment.

I could be furious with Gavin for the rest of our last night together. Or, I could be as grateful as I had been to Simeon when I thought it was he who knew I needed more time.

But it had been Gavin who ensured I had time and space to breathe .

To adjust. Simeon, it seemed, was ready to drag me out of one prison into another.

Eight or nine days was all it would have taken to bring me from Warrich to those Caves.

I would be there now. I would have arrived to my people—my betrothed—weak, nimble, scared, confused.

Without the strength in my body, the fire in my veins, the knowledge of the gods and their power.

Had we gone straight to those Caves… I would have gone in blind.