Chapter 41
Chapter Forty-One
My anger evaporates at my wife’s expression.
Why does she look distraught? He was forcing himself on her.
Wasn’t he?
Mayah stares down at the captain’s lifeless body, her eyes welling with tears. She looses a pained cry that rents my heart in half.
By the Skies.
My lungs won’t summon air.
Mayah falls to her knees beside the captain, tears streaming down her pale cheeks—
—and my world shatters.
I was wrong. So horribly wrong.
My wife cradles her dead lover’s head in her lap, cheeks wet with traitorous tears. She skims her fingers over his face, achingly slow. My heart splinters.
She doesn’t love me. She never loved me.
Skies damn into depthless oblivion.
He came to take her home.
And I killed him. The man my wife does—did—love.
There is no name for the cold grief seeping through my bones, a twisting, suffocating, black void of despair. It siphons every happy memory I might have had and sets it aflame.
It leaves not even a whisper of ash behind.
Grief for myself, but also for her. Because apparently, that’s how fucking deep my love for her flows. That I feel guilty for killing the man she loved. For the pain I caused her.
My eyes rake over her tear-stained face. The heartbreak in her eyes breaks my heart.
Faramir’s words echo in my ears.
You think she actually loves you?
You think she actually loves you?
You think she actually loves you?
I was wrong. So fucking wrong. And now I’ve ruined her life.
I—
My wife raises her red-rimmed eyes.
I open my mouth, a fucking apology on my tongue that I barely rein in. A weak exhale escapes instead, along with the fragments of my hope.
Hope of a future with her. A life with her.
Her face hardens before my eyes—despair fading away into rage. She bares her teeth in a vicious snarl, an expression of cold violence that I’ve never witnessed from her.
Her arm whips through the air, and the fucking stream rises up behind her.
With a sharp shove of her hand, the water flies forward and slams into my chest.
My back crashes into the wall, head colliding with the rough stone. Shock freezes me in place. For a moment, I can only stare at her, mouth agape—she has a second affinity. She’s a waterwielder.
This.
Fucking.
Liar.
Anger swirls inside me like a violent storm ready to burst free.
I stagger to my feet, arm raised.
She doesn’t hesitate. The waterwielder arcs her arm through the air, and thick ribbons of water tunnel toward my chest.
But I’m ready this time.
I avoid the whips easily, summoning a storm overhead, fueled by my rage, by my despair.
By my heartbreak.
It was all a lie. Everything was a lie.
How? How did she do this?
Her mouth parts as she takes in the dark clouds within the cavern. She steps backward, eyes riveted overhead.
Thunder cracks. She flinches.
Her back hits the wall just as a flash of lightning rips through the room. Thunder booms again, and her knees buckle. She’s panting, gasping for breath, eyes wide.
I’ve seen her like this before—comforted her, held her through the storm until her fear melted away.
Now I am the storm.
Lightning flashes again, closer to her.
She whimpers, and my heart splinters again.
I steel myself against it.
She’s not my Mayah. She’s not my anything.
She’s a stranger. A traitor and a spy. A fucking waterwielder.
My enemy.
I stalk toward her pitiful form.
“So many lies you’ve managed to tell me, wife.” I stop before her crumpled body. “At least your fear was one truth.”
The clouds surge closer, thunder rattling the stone walls, and she faints, slumping lower against the ground.
For a moment, I’m motionless. Breaths heaving, fists clenching, I can only stare at her. There’s a sharp crack, but I don’t know if it’s the sound of my knees hitting the stone floor or my heart shattering.
Mayah is a waterwielder.
And … and I am the realm’s worst truthwielder.
Head cradled in my hands, I weep.
I weep for the woman I loved, the one who never existed.
And I weep for the man I was, desperate to earn her love.
I will never be him again.
I swear it by the Skies, by the Thunder, by anything and everything.
She will never fool me again.