Page 26 of The Unbound Witch

Jaw slackened, he looked at me, then to Kir over my shoulder, his face hardening until only steel filled his silver gaze as he glared at her. “I am.”

“How?” I breathed, pushing to stand … reaching for him.

“Raven, don’t,” Kirsi demanded. “He’s been lying to us. Tell her where Grey is.”

That perfectly chiseled jaw ticked. “I can explain.”

Stepping backward, I looked at Kirsi. “I don’t understand.”

“Show her. Show her who you really are.”

Nostrils flaring, he clenched his teeth and answered, “Thisiswho I really am.”

“No. Your other form, shifter.”

“Raven, if we could…”

The signs were there. All of them, forever, and yet I’d been too naive to see it all this time. There were no wings, no markings on his body. His face filled with sadness, eyebrows drawn as one moment he stood as Bastian, the dead king, and the next, Grey Firewing.

I stumbled backward, tripping over a rock. I fell, but cool arms caught me as Kirsi swept in. She had my back. Just like she always had.

“But you can’t be … Youliedto me?”

He blinked slowly, raising his hands. “Let me explain.”

“Raven …” Eden whispered.

“No.” I shook as fury built. “You lied. And lied. You watched me suffer, cry, mourn you to the point of sickness and exhaustion. And you just …”

I turned my back to him, contemplating my next move as everything we had, every moment we shared, burned to embers as quickly as his favorite magical notes. I stepped once. And then again, wondering where on this forsaken earth I could run. Hide. Have one second alone with my own thoughts. I took several more steps.

“Stop,” he demanded. Not the command of a man, the assertion of a king. The desperate need within his voice dancing around the edges of his control. “Raven, don’t make me chase you.”

Fire erupted within my veins. Hurt and anger and sadness wracked its way through my entire being as I tried to make sense of the world and couldn’t.

“You have no right to make demands of me, King. Do not chase me. Stay the hell away from me.”

I did not look back as I darted into the forest.

He was Grey. I’d known he was half shifter, half witch. But the wings. We’d flown together that night on the mountain, and he’d been lying to me the entire time. Grey wasn’t visiting the witches to stand in for the king, hewasthe king. In a different form. He’d been the one to make my All Hallows Eve mask. But it didn’t make sense. I’d seen them together. Both were in the room the day I cast death upon him.

Layers and layers of truths and lies swarmed around as present as any of the saplings as I ran, dodging trees and rocks and low branches. Kirsi’s glow had vanished. I didn’t know if she followed me now or stayed back to yell at the Dark King. My chest burned harder than it ever had, the illness that plagued me thrumming within my limbs and muscles. I was weak, so fucking weak. But I was also done. With everyone and everything. How could the witches lying for their cause be the end of the world when he was also lying for his?

Down and down and down I ran, occasionally slipping on the loose pebbles below my feet, unable to see beyond one cluster of trees to the next. Utterly defeated, I slid to a stop, bracing my hands on my knees as I bent over, gasping for air. Pushing through the burn in my body until I felt too weak and crashed to the ground, heaving.

“Raven,” he yelled from behind me. “There’s nowhere you can run that I will not find you. I will chase you all over this world if I have to.”

He slid to a stop the second he realized I’d fallen. I tried to stand. Pain shot through my ankle and up my leg and I cried out as he reached for me, shoving him away.

“Don’t touch me.”

His voice was little more than a whisper as he begged me. “Please don’t do this.”

“You lied.” I tried for more conviction, but failed.

“You tried to kill me.”

Narrowing my eyes, I used a tree to brace myself into a standing position, though I still had to look up to glare at him. “We both know I hadnochoice in that. That’s the difference here. You had a choice, and you chose to deceive me. All this time. Why? Just tell me why I deserved that when I’ve been dying inside every day without you. And you’ve just watched me suffer.”