Page 76

I looked around and absorbed the calming comfort of the seaside cabin, seeing it in a different light.

He’d told me about this place—his favorite place—and I could see why.

The bright oak and gentle blues and greens in every piece of decor were soothing, and the sound of the ocean was a constant restorative.

“This cabin doesn’t look four hundred years old.”

Damond chuckled. “The stubborn bastard just rebuilds it every time it breaks.”

Just like he had done for me.

“After you married, it took Simeon’s men ten days to find you,” Damond continued. “The day they took you, Smyth had left you inside to hunt. When he came back, you were gone. With no sign of a struggle and only a single note.”

I looked back down at the parchment. Foreign words written unmistakably in my own script.

“He chased after them, but at that time, he was just a blacksmith who liked to fight. They were faster, far more skilled, and Simeon knew how to cover his tracks. But Smyth never stopped looking, and after eleven years, he found Simeon. He pleaded for him to give you back. Simeon told him what he had done—placed you in a deep sleep, so that the army of people within the Winterton Caves could grow large and powerful enough, fortified by generations, to support him in the fight against Molochai. And so he could take as long as he needed to learn about your power. He came up with his plan—a prophecy predicting a young savior queen, powerful, impressionable, and sacrificial—as you’ve always been.

Your mother was clairvoyant, so to anyone who knew her, a prophecy was easy to believe.

Simeon told Smyth this and ordered him to move on. ”

“I don’t let go. Ever.”

Of me .

I leaned forward and buried my face in my shaking hands.

“Obviously, Smyth didn’t move on,” Damond continued.

“When it was clear that Simeon would not concede to his appeals, he went to Molochai. His father. He asked for a way to be frozen in time like Simeon, like Molochai, like you, so that one day he could see you again. He made his blood oath. He vowed to kill for Molochai in exchange for the power to make him ageless. Stuck at thirty-one. Molochai let him believe it would only be one kill, that the victim would be guilty. But Molochai tricked him. It wasn’t just once, and it wasn’t just the guilty,” Damond uttered darkly.

“He butchers whoever Molochai tells him to, and he’s been bound by that oath for over four hundred years. ”

“What if Molochai gave him an order to kill me?” I looked up, pressure building in my throat. “What was his plan then?”

“Molochai wanted to kill you himself.” Damond gestured to my torso.

“Even if that wasn’t the case, to take another life, the oath requires Molochai to give a name, and to Molochai—when he first found out you existed—you were Aryella Gold.

Simeon was smart in coming up with that loophole to protect you, I’ll give him that.

You were safe with Smyth as long as Molochai didn’t know who you truly were. ”

“He cannot know,” Gavin had said to me.

Damond sighed and said, “Even then , Smyth had a backup plan. He had me following you both. I was far enough away to give you privacy, close enough to take care of you if he had to…” Damond flinched. “He would have killed himself before hurting you, Ary.”

“If I hurt you, I’ll beat him to it.”

Those words, about Ezra’s threat to kill him. He was being… quite literal.

I blinked out a tear. Even if he didn’t deserve it.

Hearing this story with a clearer mind, from someone other than Gavin, made it more real. I’d fought to believe it, refused to trust it. If true, it explained why Gemma would dare leave me alone with him. If I was indeed his wife and everything Simeon had told her had been a lie…

“Come when you’re ready ,” she had said. “ Do what you need to do to… find yourself.”

She, too, had meant that literally.

I buried my face in my hands again, rubbed my eyes to soothe the pounding in my head.

“Will Gemma tell Elias and the others the truth?” I whispered.

“Smyth asked her not to, though I would imagine she’ll tell Finn.” Damond sighed. “Simeon has controlled your life for too long. How you reveal yourself to them should be on your terms. With that, she agreed.”

A wave of gratitude washed over me, for both of them—the two people who knew me best in the world.

“This is the truth?” I whispered, pointing to the table and the letter.

“I need you to promise me, Damond, that this is the truth. Swear it. On your life, on the lives of everyone you’ve ever loved.

” I could feel power rumbling within me.

I couldn’t access it—not yet, in this body still weak, still healing.

But it was there. “Because I vow ,” I uttered through clenched teeth, “I vow, here and now, that the next person who lies to me will need the protection of all twelve gods combined.”

“It’s the truth, Ary. I swear on my own soul.” His lips curled into a sly smile. “And you know I love myself far too much to risk my soul.”

Once more, I covered my face with my hands and focused on gravity holding my feet to the floor. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know,” Damond replied.

“Will he come back?”

“He can’t.” He squeezed my arm. “He has to find a way to break the oath. You’re not safe until it’s done. ”

Tears pooled to relieve the burning in my eyes. I wiped them away with the sleeves of my oversized sweater and straightened my shoulders. No more tears. I couldn’t afford them. I had to stay strong for me, for my people. Even for him.

“You’re not weak for weeping over him.” The battle must have raged clearly on my face, as Damond gently lowered my sleeve from my eyes and squeezed my hand. “Gods know that man has shed four centuries’ worth of tears for you.”

My blurry gaze landed on that letter. Four hundred years.

The least I could do was read it.

Damond embraced me where I sat and gently squeezed. “Do you want me to stay?”

I shook my head, eyes locked on the paper. “No. I should read it alone.”

One more squeeze and Damond turned toward the cabin’s front door. I listened to the thump of his boots and—

“Damond?” I rushed out.

He turned back to me, hand on the doorknob.

I worked my throat through a swallow. “Would you forgive him for what he’s done?”

His lips pulled into a tight line, then a knowing grin.

He nodded. “I have forgiven him.” In response to my furrowed brow, he continued.

“My parents—descendants of Smyth’s uncle on his mother’s side—were spies for the Wintertons.

They tried to infiltrate a band of Insidions and were discovered.

They got away and ran, but Molochai gave Smyth the order to track them down and kill them.

I was ten years old. He made sure I didn’t see it happen, and after he killed them, he found a family in Tovick to take me in.

When I turned eighteen, he bought me my pub.

He’s looked out for me ever since.” Sadness glistened in my friend’s brown eyes.

“He’s never had much family without you.

And my parents… well, he knew them. They were his friends. ”

Nausea and grief churned in my stomach. His friends. He had been forced to kill his friends, and if Damond had been able to forgive him for killing his parents when he was a child… I shuddered.

I thought of my friends. Gemma, Ezra, Finn, Caz, Damond. If I lost control of my body and had to kill them—had to witness myself killing them, fully aware of the horror but unable to stop myself… how would I go on? How had he persevered through the nightmare that was his life?

I sucked in a breath, remembering he’d told me.

“I hold on to the first good thing I can think of… Lately, that’s been you. Safe, warm, fed, happy. And you, Ella… you pull me out of my nightmares and return me to my dreams.”

Air. I needed air. I grabbed the letter and burst through the front door, loyal Shera at my heels. I looked around, but Damond was nowhere to be found, most likely having guessed I would need solitude and fresh air to get through what I was about to read.

I opened the letter and forced a steady breath.

Aryella,

There is no greater truth to my existence than my love for you. You are the best part of me.

Please fight. Not for me, not for them, but for yourself.

Fight for the life you want, not the life Simeon has forced you into.

I taught you the basics in our short time together—breathing, balance, how to throw a punch and wield a dagger.

I hate that it was all we had time for, but I know you love reading, so I’ve prepared you a volume of tomes with maneuvers, strategy, everything you need to become lethal.

They are in the Brinnea cabin. Study them.

Memorize it all. Practice, hone the skills, ask Damond for help if you need it.

Take the time to test your abilities. Earth, wind, water, ice, fire, healing—I thought I’d seen them all, but there are more. You have no limits.

Damond will not betray you, but he also knows you’ll have to go to those Caves eventually.

As much as I wish to keep you from all of it, I know you can’t rest when people are suffering.

It’s one of the infinitely beautiful things about you.

It will be his goal to get you there once you’re healed.

But if you’re not ready, do not go. Do not play into their hands.

Don’t give them what they don’t deserve, because they sure as hell don’t deserve you.

Do what you need to survive and trust your instincts.

If you think something is a trap, it probably is.

Cover your tracks and run like hell. Hide in plain sight.

You’ll figure out how. Protect yourself at all costs, and when you swing your fist or your blade, don’t you miss. Just like I taught you.

Be the queen you want to be. I promise, they will love you. It’s impossible not to love you. You, my sweet love, are more than enough.

This blood oath and the danger it poses to you is the only thing keeping me away.

Molochai knows by now—from the life and power he failed to take from you a second time—that he will need to find another way.

That he cannot kill you with a blade. But that doesn’t mean he won’t try to use me to hurt you.

So as soon as you are healed, leave Brinnea.

Until the oath is broken, I don’t want to know where you are.

I will free myself from Molochai one way or another, and as long as I am living, I will come back to you. I will be there for you however you will have me. But do not be mistaken… should I be freed, I will fight for your heart. I won it once, and I have every intention of winning it again.

I love you. You are a miracle too great for this world, with or without your powers.

Let no one convince you otherwise.

Gavin

P.S. I know you were eager to learn the meaning behind my tattoos. The tally marks are not kills, but years. Four hundred and two. One for every year I’ve lived without you .

Between my trembling hands and salty tears, the ink on the paper in my hands was barely legible. It didn’t matter. I had already stored his words in my heart.

Dusk’s sun peeked from behind the heavy winter clouds and glistened on the ocean—blinding in spots, even through the blur of my tears. Just like the hope in my reborn heart. Blinding, too much to process, but persistent.

It would be a disservice to my new chance at life to lie to myself about who he was to me.

My instinct had known, I think, that his protection, his guidance, all of his strange, longing looks, his desire, his intense and mysterious words, had all been his way of trying to tell me what I meant to him.

It just hadn’t made sense. I thought he had been waiting for some elusive, alluring woman.

But it was me. She was me, and now I had to be someone else.

I didn’t know how I would fulfill my duty to these people, but I would take the time owed to me and figure it out. My way.

Simeon’s attempt to make me fresh clay molded into his weapon of choice had failed.

In taking my memories, he had taken away the very foundation of who I was.

But Gavin had given me the tools to rebuild it here, in the present.

Despite the oath that bound him to my enemy.

He’d let me figure out my strengths on my own without tying me to a centuries’ old union he wasn’t sure I would want. He was far from a perfect man.

But he had been there for me.

And once, long ago, even if I couldn’t remember, he had been mine.

That was something no magically forged identity, no evil curse, no ancient duty, or charming betrothed could make me forget.

I wasn’t sure what to believe in my heart. Who to trust. But I stared out at the endless ocean and thought of him .

I let the brush of those two silver rings—our timeless bond, for better or worse—soothe me as they rustled against my neck in the cold ocean breeze.