Page 69 of WitchCurse
“You don’t know what you seek,” I said.
“You,” he replied. “I seek you. Your love, your affection, your freedom.”
“At the cost of what? All life?”
“You don’t know that. It’s speculation, and what the fae have been fucking up for a long time.”
I did know. “I’ve seen others like myself self-destruct. You watched Sebastian nearly die, and only the alpha saved us all.” I hid my own near destruction from everyone, no one wanted the ones they cared for the most to see the real monster inside, not even me.
“What I saw answered a lot of questions I’d been seeking answers to for centuries,” Nick said. “About us, what we can be, how to survive. Why aren’t you willing to try? Does death appeal more than a chance of life with me?”
I sucked in a deep breath willing myself to keep moving as fear built up fire in my gut. “I don’t wish to be the death of you.”
“But it will happen. Someday,” Nick said. “And that’s fine, no one wants to live forever. Why can’t we share what we have now?” He reached my side and gripped my shoulder to stop me, his touch delivering warmth and need. For a long time, he’d been the only touch of heat I had, the furnace within, long extinguished.
“And if that severs our time? Gives you days instead of years?” I demanded.
“Worth it,” he said as he wrapped his arms around me from behind, pulling me tight to his chest. “As I have been all you’ve had for centuries, the same exists for me. You are mine. I wouldn’t want to exist without you anyway. I’ve lived too long with your snark and attitude to ever function without it.” He pressed his head to the back of mine. “I remember first seeing you, thought you were strong and beautiful, you and I danced and nothing else mattered. Then I found you bound, and all I could think about was how to free you.”
“Part enchantment, built to ensnare the fox,” I pointed out. I had used Sebastian to unravel the wards, but quickly found my fading power and drained soul couldn’t maintain the spells long enough to actually free me. “You were little more than a child, starved and lonely.”
“And how old were you when they first locked you away? When they first began to carve curses into your flesh to drain your power? When you made the offer…I didn’t accept for you, I accepted because I wanted to survive.” He let out a long breath. “Then you were free and I was no longer dying. My strength grew and you began to fade. I didn’t understand. I thought why am I doing so well, and he is growing more ill? Fading, I would learn later from other fae. You said it was because the world was dying, but that wasn’t why, it was because you let me have too much. I should have been a tool to use up and discard, but you gave me life…” He tucked his face into the groove of my shoulder, and warm tears fell on my neck. “I would never have asked for you to give me everything at your expense. Would you have had more strength if I hadn’t wanted this?” His arms tightened around me; the flex of his muscles solid. “Sometimes I caught glimpses of those memories you have, of Landon, and others I now recognize, like Zephyr. I thought I should be more like them, and I used the strength of your magic to build myself into what I thought you wanted.”
Only that was folly, as the outside mattered little, pretty as it might be. I’d learned long ago that external beauty often masked nightmares. “I would give you whatever you desire,” I told him.
“Except yourself?” Nick whispered.
“You have me.”
“And all the things you hide?” He stepped back to turn me to face him, pressing me into a tree and filling my space with him. Pretty was my scion in his earnest need to understand. “You fear things I don’t understand. Wouldn’t it help to show me?”
“Why does my pain need to be yours?” I asked thinking he had enough of his own memories to vanquish without adding mine.
“Because I need to understand why you fear it, that darkness.” His gaze met mine, eyes glittering with light and magic like he could see deep within. “Right now, it feels like Sebastian’s fear of his kitsune.”
“It is not irrational to fear the darkness, you don’t understand what it can do, what it can make me do.”
“That’s why I’m asking you to show me.” He rested his palm on my cheek, cupping my face to study me. “We’ve been bound nearly two centuries and still you hide from me.” He tugged my braid forward, the red still mixed with the white. “Lack of trust?”
“I don’t know why the red has returned,” I told him honestly. “Perhaps there is something of the wild magic of this world that I always needed?” I leaned into the tree, letting his weight press against me in heat and welcome sensation. “You have seen me devour friend and foe, and even that is not the darkest of my secrets. I wish not that you would hate me.”
“Could never happen,” Nick said, his tone earnest without a hint of a lie. “You could tell me that you came to this world and devoured my parents and I’d still not hate you. I’ve loved you longer than them…”
“I knew not your sires, would have saved them if I could, spared you all this.”
“I don’t want to be spared. I don’t want to live in the past.”
“Then why ask to see this pain?” Why drag it into the light and open old wounds that would never truly heal?
“Because it holds you back. Memories of Landon, his kisses you might wish for, but it’s his death that breaks you. Why? You didn’t know him well enough to love him.” Nick pressed his forehead to mine, gaze penetrating even as tears rose to blur my sight. “It’s like a wall. That moment when you realized it was him, something changed, but you won’t let me see it.”
“Everything changed, I murdered him.”
“You had no idea who he was, or why he became a dragon. Do you even know to this day? More than a name to a face of a man who showed you affection and later changed into a beast, do you know anything of him? He might have been a terrible person. Do you even know?”
“No,” I admitted. Only what I became after that was the end of everything.
“But his death broke you. Because he had been kind? Because you saw a future in him? Love? Or fear of what you might become? Or what came after that you refuse to show me?”