“How about instead of adding more daggers to your collection, you teach me how to defend myself using my magic?” The angrier I became, the more heat hummed through my veins. If only I knew how to wield it.“Or teach me how to evanesce.” At least then I’d have a chance of escaping if the Queen came for us.
He shook his head, his cerulean eyes shuttering. “It’s too—”
“Dangerous,” I finished.
Apparently, practicing magic near the cottage could draw the Queen’s attention since no recorded Danú lived in Hollowshade. You know how I solved that problem? By suggesting we take the portal elsewhere. Rían nearly had a heart attack. Heaven forbid I left this cage for more than a gulp of fresh air or a short stroll on the beach with a glamoured Rían trailing behind. He wouldn’t even let me go down to the village for a loaf of fresh bread.
“Exactly,” he agreed with a bob of his head.
“So I’m to live like this for the rest of eternity?” To be a prisoner in my home. To never see my sister again. To let him make all my choices in the name of “safety.”
“Only until I kill the Queen.”
“Something you haven’t managed to do in over two hundred years.”
“I didn’t have the dagger.”
“Ah, yes. A dagger you cannot wield.”
“I’m working on it,” he ground out.
He was working on it. Not me. Not us. Him.
My fingers closed over the cold hilt of the dagger on the bedside table. There was only one way to end this. Rían wasn’t just breaking me. He was breaking himself.
I gestured toward the door with the gleaming blade. “Leave.”
His chin jerked, and he stumbled. The heel of his boot caught on the quiver, and he slipped. His back slammed against the wall. “You don’t mean that.”
The horror in his wide, worried eyes nearly made me falter. But in order to save us, I had to destroy us first.
“I do. I want you to leave me alone. If you’re so worried about the Queen finding me, then it’s the best choice for us both. She’ll have no reason to assume I’m still alive if we aren’t together.”
His trembling hands reached for mine. “You’re not thinking straight.”
On the contrary. For the first time in months, my head felt clear. “I can’t be with you when you’re like this. I’ve spent my whole life as a pawn, bending to the whims of men. You don’t get to control me too.”
Those hands that had held me so tenderly, that had brought such pleasure, fell to the wall, as if the plaster was the only thing keeping the man I loved upright. “I don’t want to control you.”
“Then let me be free.”
He blinked. “You want to be free from me.”
I nodded, knowing he’d taste the lie if I spoke the words aloud. This wasn’t what I wanted, not by a long shot. Sending him away felt like prying open my ribcage and cleaving my heart from my chest, but I couldn’t live like this anymore. Maybe a temporary separation would help him realize how ridiculous his demands had become.
“I hope…” His weak voice broke. “I hope you find someone who makes you happy. Someone who can give you the carefree life you want. The life you deserve.”
Couldn’t Rían see?Hemade me happy.Hecould give me a better life than I could’ve hoped for in my wildest dreams. But not if he continued to hold his fears closer than he held me.
Rían shuffled out of the room. The slamming door rattled the painting I’d picked up in the market. Guess what fell out from behind the frame? Another bloody dagger.
As if these weapons would do anything but incense the Queen.
My heart battered my breastbone in the stark silence. Suddenly, I was no longer in my room but on that cliffside. Terror clawed at my throat when I thought of the untold violence in the soulless black pits of her eyes.
That vile witch had stolen enough from me.
She couldn’t have my sanity as well.