“We both know you won’t.”
They stared at each other.
“Fine,” Ru said at last, crossing her arms tightly as if it would protect her heart. “I won’t kill you. Yet.”
“We both know I should have died centuries ago, anyway,” he said, cocking his head. “But not everyone gets what they want.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
He shook his head. “It means you’re more than welcome to stab me through the heart if it will make you feel better. I'd probably enjoy it.”
Sadness tinged his sarcasm, an apology wrapped in a joke. It was too much. It wasn't enough.
“Youleftme,” Ru said. It wasn’t the thing she had meant to say. She had meant to say,Watching you bleed to death would be a pleasure, you murderous traitor.But her churning emotions had other ideas. “Don’t you understand that you betrayed me? Twice? You broke my—” She almost bit her tongue to stop herself from saying it. He didn’t need to know how deeply he’d hurt her.
Taryel lifted a hand as if to comfort her, and she cringed away. Just one small movement, but it felt as if she had openeda depthless crevasse between them. He stepped away then, allowing her space. His expression was ruination.
“Ru,” he said, and that familiar, deeply accented voice crushed Ru's heart with gentle fingers. “I know I've hurt you. But please, don’t push me away. I didn’t mean to kiss you, the artifact… I got caught up in the moment. Listen, I called you here for a reason.”
She stared. “Called me here?Youdid…” She pressed a hand to her temple where the artifact’s low hum still reverberated, “You woke me, you dragged me through the forest. You made me…” She went cold at the thought of his mouth on hers, the ache of her desire.
Her disgust must have been palpable. Taryel retreated further, a picture of contrition. “I didn’t know it would affect us so strongly. I didn’t mean…”
“I’m sure you absolutelymeant,” she said, seething. “By the way, you could have come at any time. You know I’ve been at the Tower. I haven’t gone anywhere. It’s been months, Fe—” She swallowed hard. Would she ever allow herself to accept that he was gone? “It’s been months.”
Taryel watched her with such heaviness, such weight, that she felt momentarily swallowed by it. His presence here. She had believed the only remaining hint of Fen was this painful tether to the artifact. And now, here was Taryel, the same man as ever, yet somehow infinitely different. Her shadow, the man who had offered her his traveling cloak, who had promised to protect her in every way, was truly gone. Only Taryel remained: immortal, something like a god incarnate, and the black hand of death.
And he hadmissedher.
Anger fluttered helplessly at her chest, a flame that would not be snuffed. Anger with him, but most of all herself. She had wanted this. Dreamed of this nightly. Was he not handing it to her? Was it not already hers?
At last, Taryel spoke. His words were low, hesitant, as if coaxing a wild creature from the underbrush. “If I had come to you,” he said, “If I’d appeared at your doorway unannounced, would I have been greeted with an embrace or a knife in the throat? Be honest.”
Ru clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering, to keep herself from flying apart into a cloud of untethered particles. Shewantedto hate him. But hate had begun to feel a lot like something else, something just as deep and far more painful.
“Why now?” she asked. “What do you want from me? I don’t have the artifact.”
“Of course you don’t,” Taryel said, as if she had brought up some random topic out of the blue. “Lord D’Luc has it.”
Ru refused to let the anger go. “Did you kill Lyr?”
Taryel blinked. “What? No. Good lord, Ru, what kind of monster do you think I am?”
“Are you actually that delusional?” Ru said in a kind of wonderment. She was growing colder by the second now, her words punctuated by chattering teeth. “You revealed yourself as the Destroyer… you admitted that youusedme to get to the artifact…”
“I admitted nothing even remotely to that effect,” he replied, clearly growing angry along with her. “Youstole the artifact fromme, remember? But I suppose it’s not up to me what happens to my own heart.”
“I’ve yet to prove that outlandish claim,” said Ru. “There’s no scientific basis.”
He regarded her impatiently, his black hair moving over his forehead in the night wind. “Unfortunately, I don’t have a scholarly paper to present as my defense. But I know it’s my heart. I know it because it called toyou. No one else.”
Ru moved away slightly, involuntarily, her back pressed against the frosted tree. She was suddenly afraid that if she got too close to him, she might fall into his well of gravity. Take him in her arms and never let go.
He moved toward her, slowly, panther-like in the heavy dark. His gaze caught and held hers, and she couldn’t move. Didn’t want to. “You have every right to hate me,” he said. “But I know you believe me. Just as I believe that the artifact is my heart, that its magical transformation has kept me alive all these centuries.”
“A heart already beats in your chest,” Ru said through clenched teeth. “You can’t have two.”
“According to medicine, to science,” he said, one corner of his lovely mouth curving upward. “But what about magic?”
