He sighs. “If I don’t, my wings won’t regenerate. I’ll be cast out of heaven and bound to earth forever.”
“Mortal?”
“You have killed and killed before, but still they look like…like this.”
“Very perceptive,” he says, pulling me to him. “They heal in increments. Very slowly. It’s part of the punishment, to keep this cycle long into eternity.”
“That’s cruel.”
“Curses are meant to be by design.” He pauses, his free hand running over the cool grass. “But I’ll never hurt you, Lyra.”
Peering up at him, I’m caught in his dark eyes that show the glimmering of his soul. There’s kindness there, and a hatred for what he’s been cursed to do, but there’s also something else that flashes bright with certainty. With compassion.
It all could make my idiotic human heart fall for him.
Do I feel something for him? I’ve spent so much of my life focused on hating creatures like him, hunting them, and now I find he’s both what I was told and nothing like it at all. He’s so much more.
Or maybe it’s just the bond? He told me of fated beings being two souls forged from one and he also told me how fate taunts, too.
I’m not sure if I believe all of that yet, but whatever is happening does feel bigger than us.
I suck in a breath and look away, tiredness pulling at me. But while I know this peace must come to an end soon, I’m not ready to give him up just yet.
Because…
Even if I’ve somehow gone and fallen in love, he must go. I may not want to kill him anymore, but he isn’t of this world. And when he takes another soul, he’ll return to the heavens until next year.
No matter what he says, I can’t return with him. I’m not divine; I don’t belong there, either.
Fate is wrong.
We can never be.
Emptiness.
I open my eyes to find the warmth beside me gone. The place where Rowan lay is already cooling, the faint impression of his body pressed into the earth like a ghost of him remains. Panic claws up my throat as I sit upright, heart hammering against my ribs.
Where is he?
The bond hums.
He wouldn’t abandon me. Not after everything.
Unless he had to.
The thought sinks its teeth into me. A woman. A soul. The curse he can’t escape. Shame twists through my chest, sharp and bitter, because part of me understands. Part of me hates that I do.
He’s gone to take another innocent.
I find the scraps of my tunic on the ground and wrap the shredded material around myself. I tie my belt at my middle to keep everything in place and then pull on my cloak.
The second I drag on my boots, I leap on my horse and gallop back into the forest.
The trees blur as I follow the pull in my chest. The invisible tether that stretches tight between us hums with warning that something is terribly wrong.
The closer I get, the more his fury vibrates through the bond. My skin prickles, and when I glance down at my hands gripping the reins, red lines streak along my skin. Dozens of tiny nicks, all erupting across my arms from an invisible foe’s blade.
Not my foe. Rowan’s.