“And it pains me that you think I cannot make a decisionabout my future without being misled by the men in my life.” Suddenly, I am on my feet. Too furious to stand still, I begin to pace in tight loops across the terrace. “Gods, Penn, you accuse Soren of toying with my emotions. What is it you are doing? Showing up here, acting the wounded party, asking me to return to Caeldera with you…And, all the while, I have yet to hear you express what our life will look like, should I make that choice. Will we be together? Or will things go right back to how they were before I went through the portal at Blister Bight?”
“You expect me to be an oracle, predicting the future? I cannot do that, Rhya. All I can tell you is how I feel now, in this moment.” He steps into my path, halting me in my tracks. I did not even hear him find his feet. He does not touch me, but his eyes hold me captive, their burning depths ablaze with the intensity of his emotions. “This fire you have lit inside me will burn and burn and burn until it has consumed me from within. I know you feel the same. Your body does not lie. The bond does not lie.”
I cannot deny the words. They are the truth—but not the whole of it. I cling to my hard-fought logic even as my foolish heart begs me to yield. To fall back into his arms and let his fiery touch erase all my hesitations.
“Passion alone is not enough to sustain a partnership,” I whisper. “At least…not the kind I want.”
His eyes narrow. “And what kind is that?”
“The kind in which I am an equal in all aspects. Encouraged to participate, not relegated to the sidelines like a child.”
His pause is rife with self-restraint. “I have only ever sought to keep you safe.”
“I know that. I do. But, Penn…I have learned to keep myself safe. My powers are strong, and grow stronger every day.”
His head shakes once, a jolt of disbelief. “So you do not need me anymore. That’s what you are saying.”
“No, I’m saying that I do not want to love someone because Ineedhim. I want to love someone because Ichoosehim. And because he chooses me in return. The real me. Not the version he wants me to go back to, not the potential he hopes he can forge me into one day. Just…me, as I am now. Rhya.”
He looks at me as though I am speaking a foreign tongue, as though he cannot begin to understand what I am trying to convey to him. Each second I spend waiting for a response drives the blade a bit deeper into my heart.
“What is it you want me to say to you?” he asks finally. “Tell me the words, I will speak them. Hand me a script, I will read it. Whatever assurances you need, I will give them to you…So long as it means you are with me on my ship in two days’ time, charting a course back to my city.”
A fissure of pain splits through my chest as the blade strikes clean through. I do not want to tell him how to win me. I do not want to hand him the cipher he needs to crack the secrets coded into the subtext of my soul.
I want him to know, in one look across a room, how I am feeling. I want him to catch my gaze in a thick crowd and make me feel as though we are the only two in existence, so connected there is no question of it. I want the gentle caring I’d seen between Uther and Carys; the bone-deep sense ofknowingthat radiates between Alaric and Arwen.
They seem to move in the same orbit, like two tethered stars,Soren told me once.
That is what I want—and I will accept no less.
Not ever again.
Years ago, Tomas kept me like a secret. His hidden shame.Now Penn keeps me like treasure. A dragon safeguarding gold. And yet, neither of them has ever kept me the way I truly desire.
Like a vow.
Like a promise.
Not hidden away, nor sequestered in an airless vault. A love that feels like the wind. Wild and free. Infinite as the aether.
“Say something,” Penn begs, voice gruff.
“My head is spinning,” I admit truthfully. “It’s been a long night already. I need a bit of time to wrap my thoughts around this.”
“This?”
“Returning to Caeldera. Returning to…you.”
A muscle leaps in his cheek. “You’ve had weeks of time.”
I did not use it pining over you,I think but do not say, for I know it will only hurt him. “Penn…”
“You love me,” he whispers, head shaking slowly back and forth. His eyes are an inferno of devastation. “I know you do.”
I do.
I do love him.