Words can be truth, but they can also be lies.
I’ve been lied to before. Who is to say that Senan isn’t lying to me now? After what happened with Eason, I would be a fool to trust a man at his word even though I wish with all my heart that what he says is true.
“How can you expect me to take your word for it? To believe that you came back for me when I waited at those stones on four different occasions and saw not one fae fly through the portal?”Thatis the truth I know. The truth I can trust.
Senan stumbles to his feet and over to his bed. From his bedside drawer, he withdraws something, holding whatever it is in the palm of his hand as if it were made of glass.
Only, it’s not glass.
It’s a handful of cerulean blue feathers with the tips of the vanes singed and black.
“Is this enough proof for you?” He drops my own feathers into my hand and sinks down next to me.
He isn’t lying.
He came back for me…
And I wasn’t there.
I should’ve been. I would have been if not for having blindly trusted someone I thought I knew.
Senan’s fingertip drags along my cheek, tracing my tears before tucking a strand of dyed hair behind my ear. “There hasn’t been a day since we met that I haven’t loved you. My soul aches for yours. This pain in my heart never goes away. I still love you.”
And I love you.
But sometimes, love isn’t enough.
Secret confessions in the dead of night cannot change what comes at dawn.
Tomorrow, I’ll wake in the bowels of the castle, homeless, destitute, and bound by gravity, while my prince does his duty to his family and to his kingdom.
“I am sorry for the pain my absence has caused you,” I say, dropping my feathers back into his scarred palm. Something to remember me by when he weds his princess. “I beg you, please do not make an innocent man pay for my mistakes.”
Senan pulls back and looks away. My feathers flutter to the floor between us.
I leave him there, not knowing if I’ve made things better…
Or made them worse.
Thirty-Three
SENAN
If someone would’ve toldme yesterday that this morning I’d be strolling past a line of pikes topped with rotting heads and no eyes, I would’ve laughed my ass off. But here I am, strolling away, doing my best not to breathe through my nose so the foul stench of the grayish skin melting off the skulls doesn’t leave me in a heap on the silty black earth.
After I let this “friend” of hers go free, Allette will be so relieved that she’ll come to my room to thank me. Then I can say all the things I didn’t last night.
If only I hadn’t dusted.
If only I could’ve convinced her to stay until I sobered up.
If only…
I can’t blame her for leaving. After seeing me in such a deplorable state, she must think me pathetic. If I could exhume the man I once was, the one she loved, maybe I could convince her to choose me again.
There must be some way to remind her what we once had. That we are two halves of the same whole.
When I explained to Bilson my plans for today, he’d questioned my sanity. I’d told him that I was perfectly capable of coming here on my own, but he did not agree.