But it is not true,Fionn reminded his aching soul.I cannot yearn for something that did not exist. It is not fair to Rory for me to yearn for him.
By the Deeps, how I yearn for him.
‘So, is this what you and Neacel have been sneaking around for? Yes, I have noticed,’ Iomhar said with a crooked smile. ‘I have given you space, but your absence has been noticed.’
‘I will come back to the palace after this.’
Iomhar sat next to Fionn on the sand. ‘This soul bond. You are sure you wish to break it?’
‘I must.’ Fionn hung his head. ‘I know what is at stake.’
‘And what do you feel for your human?’
Why was Iomhar asking him this? What did it matter?
Fionn turned his face so that Iomhar wouldn’t see the anguish in it. ‘The bond clouded my judgement. I thoughtperhaps I cared for him. But it was not so. And he does not care for me. Everything we felt was a falsehood.’
Iomhar leaned in. ‘How do you know? What did your human feel?’
‘It is not important. It was all a lie.’
Fionn’s shaking shoulders betrayed him. His tears dripped silently onto the sand.
‘Oh, little sprat.’ Iomhar’s arm wrapped around him. ‘Let us speak with your father. Perhaps—’
‘No!’ Fionn knocked Iomhar’s arm away and roughly scrubbed the tears from his cheeks. ‘He does not need to see me so weak. I am enough of a disappointment to him already. I shall not fail in my duty again.’
‘You are not a disappointment, Fionn…’
Fionn stood up, keeping his back to Iomhar, and crossed his arms. ‘I must wait for the witch’s assistant. Stay or go, I do not care.’
Iomhar lay back against the dunes. ‘Then I shall wait with you.’
The wind picked up, whipping Fionn’s hair into a stream behind him. The Minch lay ahead, and underneath it an entire kingdom waiting to give him away. This was his true fate. Not some childish fantasy of predestined love or freedom. Freedom with Rory.
For a moment his mind’s eye drifted to wider waters. Oceans beyond the Minch. Great reefs and canyons of water deeper than he’d ever known. Rory by his side, navigating the unknown together.
He exhaled deeply and tried to release the dream onto the wind, where it belonged.
Chapter Twenty-Four
After the shock of Fionn leaving, Rory was at a loss for what to do. He was suddenly stranded in the middle of Loch Broom by himself, directionless and purposeless.
That bastard. That arrogant know-it-all, prince of fuck, twatting monster merman piece of shite.
How could Fionn leave him like that?
Rory swallowed hard, fighting the idea that he’d been betrayed. Because if he admitted that it felt like a betrayal, then he’d be admitting that he was invested. That he was genuinely prepared to go through with it, to leave his old life behind and start a new one with a blue merman under the sea.
It was easier to be angry. To shout his anger into the water. The current whipped up around him, scaring away a shoal of fish.
Why was it so painful?
This painful longing, that’s what Fionn had been talking about when he called it all a lie. Was this feeling real? How could Rory possibly tell, when he’d never felt it for anyone before in his life?
Rory knew whatattractionfelt like, sure enough. And his attraction to Fionn felt outstandingly real from the moment they’d met. The actualfeelingspart, the bit Rory wasn’t so familiar with, had come later. Once he’d learned Fionn wasn’tentirely the prick he seemed. That even when he was being a prick, it came from a noble sort of place.
What if Rory never saw the noble, arrogant prick again?
