Page 27 of The Unbound Witch

“You may not understand this, but I cannot trust anyone.”

I shook my head. “You could have trusted me. How could you stand there and ask for something you weren’t willing to give?” Whatever was left of my meek, healing heart was shattered, turned to dust. It was gone, just like every last bit of care I had for anyone and anything. “What was the point of all this? What did you gain in your game?”

“It wasn’t a game to me. Every moment you had with Grey was authentically me. The only difference was the mask I wore. Those moments are still ours.”

I pressed my back against the knotty tree, folding my arms over my chest. “There is no ‘ours’. There is only yours. Your decisions, your lies, your moves.”

He stepped close to me, lifting a hand to swipe a wild curl from my face, but I turned away from him. “I needed us to be real, Bastian. When everything else was a lie, when I could trust no one else after Kirsi died, I needed you.”

“I was there!” he roared. “I stayed hidden in that room with you when you broke. While you lay on that floor, lost in your own grief, I kept to the shadows, waiting for you to need me. I’ve never left you. Even here. I left everything behind, left the world to burn to the fucking ground, just to be with you. And maybe I was a coward. Maybe I used Grey to make sure you were who you claimed to be, but can you really blame me? My parents were murdered by the witches. The witches have destroyed everything in my whole life. Every move I make, they are there to wreck me. And I couldn’t let that happen with you. I needed you—us—to be real, too.”

I stopped. His words were my own poison and antidote. The blade and the binding. My heart beat like an erratic drum in my chest as I stumbled toward him. “You could have told me. I would have understood.”

“I tried. When you had your panic attack at Grey’s touch, when I saw what that did to you, I knew. But the hunters came. I’ve wanted to tell you so many times, Raven. All Hallows Eve, I thought I would confess that day, later at the cabin. But by then, you’d already ensnared me, and I couldn’t risk losing you if you knew the truth.”

He dropped his head, pressing his palm to his temples. “I am not a perfect man. I’ve made so many mistakes and dragging this out was one of them, but I never did it to hurt you.”

“No.” I glared. “You did that for your own benefit without a single consideration for me.”

Grabbing my hands, he pulled my knuckles to his lips, his eyes shifting between mine. “I know I hurt you, and I’m sorry. Please tell me how to fix this.”

“You cannot. We had a plan, Bastian. Our whole lives ahead of us. I thought I knew you. This is not the man I knew. The man I mourn.”

“Fine,” he relented, moving away as he threw up every wall he’d once had with me, slipping into the role of the Dark King. Back straight, chin high, he looked down upon me as he had the first day in that damn throne room. “You will at least concede to an escort home.”

I pushed off the tree, walking past him. “I don’t need your fucking escort.”

“Wrong,” he shouted. “These lands are hurting you. You have to get home.”

I hated how right he was. How terrified I was to stay in the human lands. My shoulders dropped. “I have one condition.”

“Granted.”

“You don’t even want to know the condition?”

“As long as you live at the end of this, I don’t care what the circumstances are.”

“True. I guess it doesn’t matter what the rules are. You’ve never been one to stick to them anyway.”

12

RAVEN

It was a cruel thing to look at the man you thought you’d murdered, the man you’d cared so much about, and realize that reality, for all its wonders, would always be a balance of agony and ecstasy. In my heart of hearts, I did not hate Bastian. I did not even condemn him for his decision to keep himself guarded. He’d spent the majority of his life relying on only himself and the small group of people surrounding him. His caution made sense.

I only hated that I hadn’t been a safe enough respite for him. Had he told me, rather than let me catch him, the outcome would have been different. I would have known then what I could only question now. His declarations were merely for self-preservation, and that was the only truth I knew. A truth that continued to feed the anger within me.

He commanded the room, sucking the air out of it as he always did, while he sat brooding on Eden Mossbrook’s floral printed couch, thumbing through an old book he was not reading. Kirsi swirled along the ceiling, unable to be still as she stared down at Bastian, likely plotting his real death.

“What?” he barked, dropping the old book onto the small, round table beside him.

I’d been staring. Again. I shook my head, looking away to study the only picture on the wall in Eden’s home. A massive black ship with matching, billowing sails battling a storm in a tumultuous ocean.

“Ask your questions,” he tried again, his voice softer.

“How were you both in the room at the same time?” Kirsi asked, never the timid one.

Resisting the urge to look at him, afraid I’d give away every emotion rattling through me, I stood from the couch, moving to the painting as if the white capped waves were the most interesting thing I’d ever seen.