Page 29 of Ties of Starlight (Tethered Hearts #2)

N yrunn knew the answer to breaking Idonea’s curse had to be in her memories, but he’d read over every inch of every journal she had and still had yet to come across enough of her first life to be able to figure it out.

What was he missing?

They only had a few days left before they would reach the Constellation Pool. Nyrunn was cautious. It was possible he was reading into it, but he had hope. He couldn’t help it.

Idonea was different, so different from how she’d been at the start. Detached and passive, like she was just waiting for it all to be over, uninterested in the world around her. Now she was vibrant and so alive. Like she was living for the first time.

Like she was falling in love for the first time.

She was falling in love with him.

At least, that was his dearest hope.

So, when Frode pulled him aside that night, one of the elves Nyrunn had assigned to tracking Olaug down hovering at the edge of the camp, his heart jumped in his chest. He pushed down the emotion and quickly looked over his shoulder to see Idonea hadn’t noticed through their bond and was talking with Lady Asa by the fire. Nyrunn pulled Frode and the messenger until they were out of Idonea’s line of sight and hissed, “What news?”

The scout said, “We found him, Your Majesty.”

Nyrunn almost didn’t believe his ears. He’d started to suspect they never would. Or maybe hoped because as much as Nyrunn wanted to hold him accountable for his actions, if Idonea wasn’t thinking about him anymore, the last thing he wanted was to reintroduce him to their lives even for a second.

Nyrunn took a deep breath. “Where is he?”

“He’s in a village less than a day northeast from here. Do you want him brought in?”

“No!”

Frode’s eyebrows shot up.

Nyrunn cleared his throat. “No, that won’t be necessary. I will have him dealt with after we reach the Constellation Pool. Just keep an eye on him and stay on top of his location so he doesn’t slip away.”

“As you command, Your Majesty. However, if we don’t take him in now, he could realize he’s being followed and bolt. If he goes over the border, do you want me to pursue?”

“I understand, and no. But, don’t let him get over the border.”

The messenger nodded, mounted, and spurred his horse back northeast, and Nyrunn breathed easier the farther away he got.

“Far be it from me to criticize, Your Majesty, but are you sure that was the right thing to do?”

Didn’t Frode have other things to concern himself with?

“Then don’t criticize. ”

“Are you going to tell her?”

“Hmm. I must be getting amnesia.”

Frode startled. “Your Majesty?”

Nyrunn shot him a cold, deliberate look. “I don’t recall when how I handle my marriage became any of your business.”

Frode threw his hands up and rolled his eyes. Nyrunn didn’t need his opinion. He couldn’t ruin what was finally going so well by telling her where her so-called soulmate was. Not until he’d found out what exactly it was that the witch queen had done to start this mess and get Idonea out of it. When she was free from it, maybe then he could tell her.

Or maybe not.

They knew where he was. That was enough.

He slipped into the tent right as Idonea finished doing the last button on her nightgown, no longer doing it all the way up to her neck, but letting the top of her deathmark be visible. She turned to him, a smile pulling on her lips.

This was all he’d wanted for so long.

“I was wondering where you’d gone off to. What did Frode want?”

He couldn’t risk losing this. Losing her.

“Nothing important,” Nyrunn said as he sat on the edge of the bed and began taking his shoes off.

“Huh, I’d sort of been hoping it might be about Lady Asa,” Idonea said, climbing onto the bed as she pulled out her current journal.

“What about her?”

“I think she likes him more than she’s willing to let on, that’s all,” Idonea said.

He barely held in his laughter, like she was any decent judge of that. As he finished getting ready for bed, he looked at the journal and asked, “You know, I was wondering, do you remember more about your first life in this one than in your previous ones?”

Idonea looked up. “No. I wouldn’t say so. Why?”

“I remember seeing more about it in other journals, so I was thinking of maybe taking another look at them. We’re about to be at the Constellation Pool, and there could be something useful.” He looked over his shoulder. “In freeing you from the curse.”

The bond that recently had settled into something soft and warm now went cool.

Idonea looked back down at her journal, her loose hair falling into her face and hiding it. “The memories aren’t really anything I can control. I remember what I remember in the lives I remember them in.”

“And for your first life, that is?”

Idonea huffed, looking up quickly before her eyes darted back down. “All I remember you’ve already read or heard.”

The bond flared on her end, a tight tension creeping in.

Nyrunn reached for her bag, digging out the journal from her fourth life and flipping through it. “I was thinking about what was different about your first life than some of the others. I think you wrote about the memory of you meeting Venefica’s queen. It was the first, and only time, a witch has witnessed the Cometa Couple. Do you remember anything about her?”

Idonea sighed. “She was, nice, for a witch queen, I suppose. She was fascinated by the fact I was a half-elf. We were friends.”

Nyrunn found the passage he was looking for, skimming over it, fingers resting on the pages as he said, “Here you mention she convinced you to finish the ceremony even when Olaug was already cheating on you weeks after your marriage? ”

Idonea’s cheeks flushed a vibrant red as she glared at him. “He was not. I wrote in that memory they were rumors.”

Nyrunn raised an eyebrow, his voice dry as he said, “Really? We’re talking about the same elf you caught cheating on you red-handed last life?”

“That was—” She shook her head, cutting herself off as she stared at the canvas. “I must have done something—Not the point.” She turned back to face him. “Yes, I vaguely recall her talking me through it. She would have said anything to ensure Olaug and I finished the rituals. Her people needed Adastra to be as strong as possible since we were their allies against the alchemists.”

“Well, do you think maybe she was so invested that she did something else that would have caught you and Olaug in this cycle of coming back?”

“Not that I remember.” Idonea tightened her grip on the journal in her hands, the tension across the bond rising. “And why would she?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping you would.” Nyrunn’s eyes darted back down to the notebook in his hands as he flipped through more pages. Nyrunn paused when he came across a gap he hadn’t noticed before.

“Well, I don’t . So you should just leave it be.”

He ran his fingers through the gutter, feeling the edges of pages that had been cut out. He looked up. “We can reach out to the current queen of Venefica—”

But then the journal was ripped out of his hands as Idonea’s voice tore through him. “I said to leave it!”

Silence fell over the tent, and Nyrunn couldn’t believe it.

Idonea’s face went ashen, and she closed her fourth life’s journal. The necklace on her collarbone glinted in the starlight .

She didn’t need anyone to figure out how to break the curse. She already had.

“How long?” Nyrunn whispered.

“How long what?” But her emotions on the other end of the bond betrayed her feigned cluelessness.

He narrowed his eyes. “How long have you known how to break this cycle and stop coming back?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” Idonea laughed, but it was breathy and fake as her anxiety hummed. Her fingers brushed her necklace before she clutched the journals to her stomach. “How could I have possibly figured something like that out? I told you, when I finally manage to get this perfect, it'll break.”

How had he not seen it? She’d been saying it right to his face this whole time, and he’d been blinded by his foolish hope that he could give her everything she’d been chasing and maybe it would be enough.

“You mean, when you finally get exactly what you want.” His voice went frigid as he stepped closer, hand gesturing at her. “When everything is perfect according to you , then you'll break the cycle. Not a second before then.”

Her refusal to meet his gaze was answer enough.

“Don't make me ask again. Answer me.”

Idonea opened the journal right to the seam of the missing pages and she whispered, “It was my fourth life when I figured it out and left the instructions for my future selves. I still don’t fully understand the witch magic the queen used, but I know what to do to end it. I was going to do it in my fifth life—everything was going so well—but as you know, the last two lives I didn't make it to the Constellation Pool.”

“And even though you will this time, you're not going to. Even though you have the chance to end this miserable cycle, you're not going to. Because this life is just a way to pass the time until you get another chance to torture yourself trying to win the love and loyalty of a creature you are never going to be good enough for!”

Idonea threw the journals onto the bed. “What does my next life matter to you? You'll be dead! Why would you care what happens?”

“Why would I care?” Nyrunn’s voice cracked. What did she think this was all for? “Do you still know nothing of me? How can you expect me to spend the rest of my life knowing my wife, sleeping beside me, is just using me? How can you expect me to be alright with the woman who pledged to be faithful to me is spending the years waiting for another man? One who said he could not even stand to suffer her?”

“What more do you want from me?” Idonea’s voice rose as did her turmoil on the other end of the bond. “I have promised you that I will do everything I can to be a good wife to you, to be a good queen, at your insistence, even though I can’t promise I won’t hurt you the way I hurt him. I gave you an out! You can still take it, and I will happily disappear and then you’ll be safe.”

Nyrunn’s voice dropped to an icy whisper as he stared at her in the starlight, unable to even think of the possibility he loved her. “How can you be so obtuse?”

Idonea lifted her chin. “I've lived more lives than you can imagine.”

“And yet you are still naive and foolish.” He scoffed. “You've only been trying because you don't have a choice. This life, our marriage, me ... it’s all just the next obstacle you have to clear as you try again and again to write the story you want to no matter what anyone else wants. You're selfish.”

“I am trying to finally be happy with my soulmate.” Idonea’s eyes were filling with water, and he didn’t understand how she could be so stubbornly holding onto something that was tearing her apart. “That's fate.”

“If it were fate, you wouldn't be seven lifetimes in and married to someone else!” Nyrunn stepped closer, stopping right in front of her, staring down into her vivid blue eyes. “Face it. You're trying to rewrite destiny again and again until you get the one you want. And guess what? You never will.”

Idonea shook her head, agony flaring in their bond, but he didn’t know if it was his or hers. “You don't know anything.”

“I know that a man who loves a woman doesn't leave her at the altar. He doesn't repeatedly cheat on her. He doesn't spit on her affection for him. He doesn't insult her appearance or disparage her character. Tell me, what has he done to be so deserving of your loyalty when he has never once been loyal to you?”

“He—I—He'll be loyal when I'm someone worth being loyal to!”

Idonea's voice ripped through the air, and the second it faded, silence took its place. Her eyes finally spilled over, the tears streaking down her cheeks as she shuddered, trying and failing to hold her tears back.

Nyrunn took a slow breath, reaching out, gently brushing his palms down her arms. “What if his character has nothing to do with you? Why keep chasing him for something you could have if only you would open your eyes?”

Idonea reached up and wiped at her eyes, but she didn’t pull away. “What are you talking about?”

“Why keep yourself in this torturous cycle? You are never going to be good enough for him, and it has nothing to do with you. Why are you still so desperate to earn his affection when I am offering you mine freely, no expectations, no conditions?”

She shook her head. “It's not the same. You ended up as trapped in this as I was. You can call me ‘love’ all you like, but I know you’re just making the best of it. If you had the opportunity to go back and try again, wouldn't you? The chance to be free to choose a wife you want? One you love?”

“How long will you be so willfully blind? Do you enjoy saying these things to torture me?”

“What?”

“No. I would not go back and try again. I chose the wife I wanted. I have the woman I love. The problem is I love her, and she sees me as just a setback in her ultimate plans.”

Her face fell all over again, and Nyrunn cursed himself for this being how it all came out.

Her voice cracked. “I have asked you not to lie to me, Nyrunn.”

He ran his hands up her shoulders. “I'm not lying.”

“You cannot lie to me and manipulate me like this.” Idonea pulled back, stumbling away. She reached for her head. “I won't let you manipulate me into breaking the cycle because you're letting your ego and jealousy blind you. You don't love me. You're married to me, and you just hate the idea that our vows only bind us together in this life. All you care about is the fact I was someone else's before you and I will be after you. Love is not possession.”

“Then why do you call your obsessive pursuit of a man who has never wanted you and never will love?”

Would his words finally pierce her and make her see the truth?

But she just stepped back, moving for the exit. “You can't understand. You're not capable of it. I'm not breaking the cycle. I will die a thousand times. I will suffer whatever agonies I must until I finally make myself perfect and I have the love of all my lifetimes.”

Nyrunn couldn’t stop his next words.

“And how many people will you end up killing on the way?”

Idonea froze in her tracks, but the soft, choked gasp was louder than any sob or scream. Nyrunn regretted the words the instant they hit the air.

But he couldn’t take them back.

Idonea was gone.

Nyrunn sat on the edge of the bed and buried his head in his hands.

How could he ever break the hold this imaginary love had on her? Maybe it was written into her bones so deeply by the curse it was hopeless. He’d never stood a chance, had he?