Which was ridiculous. The man behind me was anything but safe. He’d proven that over and over again. Sure, he might not go back to Carmilla after what she’d done to his rangers, but I had no doubt Vail would find some other way to fuck me over.
I hated that I still liked his touch.Cravedit.
It had to be this stupid magic tying us together. Maybe I’d find some answers in the temple as to what this was and how toget rid of it. Then I’d be able to think straight when it came to him.
“Why exactly did you insist on riding with me?” I did my best to ignore his damn fingers and narrowed my eyes at the others, who rode ahead of us, giving Vail and me time to clear the air, apparently. I had no doubt that had been Draven and Kieran’s doing because Alaric and Roth occasionally turned around to glare at Vail.
Well, mostly Roth. Alaric tried to a couple of times and almost fell off the saddle. He’d gotten considerably better with a crossbow, but riding was clearly never going to be his thing.
Rynn was scouting ahead—I could just barely make out her furry white ass—and Cali was soaring above us. One advantage of the badlands was that they were flat in every direction. Once in a while, a mesa would rise out of the ground, but it was impossible for anyone to sneak up on us.
Above ground, anyway.
Vail didn’t answer my question right away, and just as I was about to push him for a response, I felt the echoes of grief and trepidation inside my chest. Not mine . . . I’d tucked my grief for Adrienne and Emil into a box and shoved it onto its metaphorical shelf with all the others. Close to it was the angst and stress for Nyx.
No. What I was feeling now belonged to Vail.
Whatever this emotional feedback was, it seemed to only happen when we were in close contact, and it wasn’t all the time. With Draven and Roth, it was more consistent, but between Vail and me, it felt more strained, like flashes of emotions here and there.
“Carmilla . . .” Vail trailed off, then another feeling shot through our connection, so intense, it made me inhale sharply.
White-hot rage.
“What about her?” I rasped, my hand tightening on the reins, causing the mare to toss her head in annoyance.
“Did she have anything to do with our parents’ deaths?” He spoke the words so quietly, I knew the others hadn’t heard. Not that it mattered. Most of them had been there when Carmilla had stated what she’d done, and I’d told Roth later.
I’d been planning on telling Vail but had figured it could wait. There was nothing to be done for it now, and he was still grieving his rangers. No purpose in opening up an old wound when there was a fresh new one still seeping blood.
“Yes.” I forced myself to relax my grip on the reins as a numbness took hold. It wasn’t coming from Vail. This was all me. The problem, I was learning, with compartmentalizing things was that, sooner or later, you had to deal with them.
I’d never dealt with losing my parents. I’d just let my grief fester in that damn box.
Something told me Vail had done something similar. He’d thrown himself into becoming the perfect ranger and then taking up the mantle of Marshal—just like his parents. I’d dedicated myself to being the unfathomable Heir and then to solidifying our alliance with House Laurent by marrying Demetri.
Both of us had looked to Carmilla as that stand-in parental figure. She’d shaped us into weapons she could wield—and had made sure to destroy our childhood friendship so that we’d relied only on her in those early years. Before I went to Drudonia and became close with Cali and Rynn. Before Vail bonded with rangers like Adrienne, Emil, and later Nyx.
Looking back, I realized that she had tried to sabotage my relationship with Cali and Rynn, making little comments here and there, but I’d lived at Drudonia, and that distance between me and Carmilla was probably what had saved me. If I hadn’t had my friends and if I hadn’t carved out a piece of myselfoutside of that constant pressure to impress Carmilla, would I have left Demetri?
Or would I have remained at House Laurent in a loveless marriage? Carmilla probably had plans to take out Marvina at some point, and then Demetri and I would have risen to the Heads of House role. Carmilla would have had two Heads under her thumb without even needing a Fae crown.
That was what my parents had died for.
Something wet and hot streaked down my face. I raised my right hand from where it had been resting on the handle of the dagger to brush the tears away, but a large hand caught mine and tucked it against my chest—right over where that connection thrummed.
Vail’s other hand rose, and he gently brushed my cheeks, wiping away the tears before wrapping that arm around me too.
He rested the side of his head against mine as I silently sobbed in his arms, finally grieving the loss of my parents after denying it for so long. Vail didn’t say anything, just held me as I felt his own grief wind through mine. We’d both lost so much because of Carmilla’s obsession with power.
Slowly, something else wrapped around my grief. Something enduring and resilient.
It was love. The unbreakable kind.
At first, it was just coming from Draven, but then Roth’s bond intertwined with his. I’d been learning over the last couple of days the subtle distances between how their emotions felt through the bond. Another choked sob broke from my lips when Vail’s bond joined. Tentatively, like it wasn’t sure it was allowed to be there.
I might have lost my parents—and my aunt to her own greed—but I still had family, and they wouldn’t ever let me go.
So I let myself fall apart and finally weep for the parents I’d loved and lost . . . in the arms of a man who had broken my heart.
