The words on the tip of my tongue would make me appear weak, more pathetic than anything else she’d seen yet, but…
But she deserved the truth. “If I had the power to free you, but I kept you, bound one moment by a mistek bond you didn’t want and then the next by a marriage bond you thought you did, I will always wonder if you really chose me. Was it really a choice to come here when your brother’s death was the alternative? Was it even a choice to keep the mistek bond when your own life was threatened by its removal?”
“Of course it was a choice!” She whispered, but her words rushed in urgency. “I could have chosen to allow Alastor to die. I could have chosen my own freedom. I picked—”
“You picked one terrifying thing because you thought the alternative was even more terrifying.” I managed to get all the words out without gagging on them. “You said so yourself. How can I live with myself if I know you chose me when you considered me terrible?”
“Maybe it was terrifying when I chose it. That doesn’t mean it’sterrible now.”
“Or maybe—” The thought burned a hole in my heart as I said it, but the truth demanded my admission. “Maybe you just became so accustomed to the terrible that the familiarity of it blinded you to its horrors.”
“So that’s it?” she spit out. “You decide that my leaving is better for me, and I have no choice?”
“No,” I whispered. “It’s always your choice. I will never force your decision again. I will plead with you to see the logic in leaving a kingdom that you were coerced to enter. And your brother. Do you truly think he will believe anyone if amessengercomes to tell him you are happy? Are you really satisfied with him spending the rest of his life feeling guilty over your fate? If nothing else, perhaps you’ll do it to give him peace.”
Her eyes glossed over. “I thought we were finding peace together.”
My eyes burned. “You’ve brought me more peace than I ever thought existed. It wouldn’t be fair to keep you caged after you’ve done so much for me.” My voice caught. “A firehawk needs to be free.”
She blinked a few times, dropped my hands, and spun away from me.
“Callista—”
She froze, but did not turn around.
“May I… touch your back? To break the mistek bond?”
“Yes.” She did not look at me.
I lifted my hand to her back, but paused right before I touched it, staring at my own fingers. It was the hand of a monster, perhaps in elf form, but this was the hand that had made the talisman that killed her mother. This was the hand that hadbrought pain and fear to so many in the name of justice and safety.
I settled my fingertips between her shoulder blades. At least now, this monster was doing something right. I could not love her in a cage when the key dangled in front of us. I could not ask her to pick me over her brother.
I bowed my head and wrapped my magic around the mistek bond. The cursed magic was easy to find—it had been alerting me to Callista’s feelings for months. I snapped it, ripped it right in half, before I could change my mind. The straggling remnants of the magic dissolved, separating us, and leaving a void where I’d grown used to feeling her emotions.
I missed it already.
But it had been wrong. I was, perhaps, even more of a beast for missing a presence that I had forced to be near me.
“I will stay with you,” I whispered, “all night. You will be safe. In the morning, I’ll shift outside so that I can take you to the border.”
Her head jerked down in a rough nod, and she walked away, leaving me more alone than I’d ever thought possible.
“Callista—” I didn’t have any words for what I felt, and what I felt was not fair to put on her shoulders.
But she stopped. I had to say something. “I… I’m sorry.”
She nodded again and ran to the washroom. Literally ran.
I still felt the sorrow in her heart, like a phantom memory reminding me how comfortable I’d grown with feeling her emotions through the bond.
Chapter 31: Callista
Igroaned and tried to hide the morning sunlight with a blanket over my head. It had taken me so long to fall asleep that I wanted to stay in bed for the rest of the day. Aedan and his stupid sense of honor. If I was capable of cursing people—
I blew out a massive breath and uncovered my head. If I was capable of cursing people, I’d probably be as repulsed by the idea as I was by the thought of beating someone. And Aedan had been right about Alastor. Nothing short of me leaving Hemlit would convince him that I was not being forced to stay.
Part of me wanted to be truly angry at Aedan—because I wanted to stay, to bask in his attention, to listen to him sing, to translate his grandmother’s book, to discover life with someone who loved me—but I was also sympathetic. Somehow, through a twist of magic I did not understand, I’d felt his misery and conflicting emotions as he had spoken last night.
