Chapter 17 Starlit Confessions
STARLIT CONFESSIONS
GIDEON
Daniel and Michael had gone to set the perimeter, their voices fading into the trees as they moved through the ritual of making a space defensible.
It left Ronan and me alone for the first time since I'd found him in that clearing.
“There's a lake nearby,” I said, breaking the quiet before it could settle into awkwardness. “About ten minutes west. We should wash up before full dark.”
Ronan nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”
We gathered what we needed. Soap, clean clothes from the packs Michael had been carrying, towels that had seen better days but would serve. The walk through the trees was quiet except for our boots on fallen leaves and the distant sound of water moving over stones.
The lake appeared through a gap in the underbrush, small and dark and reflecting the first stars starting to show overhead. The water looked cold and clean.
Ronan stopped at the shore and started stripping without ceremony.
He pulled his shirt over his head and I saw the full extent of the damage. Bruises in various stages of healing covering his ribs, his back, his shoulders. Scars old and new marking his skin in patterns that told stories of violence I hadn't been there to prevent.
My eyes caught on the line of his spine, the way firelight from our distant camp played across his skin, the particular grace he moved with even exhausted and hurt.
I looked away.
Too late.
“You're staring.” Ronan's voice cut through the space.
“I was cataloging injuries.”
“That what you're calling it?” He turned to face me fully, standing there in just his jeans with challenge written across his expression.
“You've been careful around me for weeks.
Before I left. Keeping distance. Now you're looking at me like...” He cut himself off.
Started again with a different angle. “Why didn't you tell me I was your tether?”
I set down the supplies I'd been holding and tried to find words that would justify what had felt like reasonable caution a month ago and felt like catastrophic failure now. “The timing wasn't right.”
“The timing.” His voice went flat. “You discovered I was your tether and decided the appropriate response was to keep it secret while I spiraled into thinking I was a danger to everyone around me?”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“From what?” He stepped closer, anger bleeding into his tone in ways that were really fear wearing a different mask. “From knowing that you needed me? That you were connected to me in ways neither of us could sever? What exactly were you protecting me from by keeping me in the dark?”
I felt my jaw tighten with the automatic defensiveness that came from being called on choices I'd already questioned myself. “I was trying to understand it first. Tether bonds are rare. I'd never had one before. I needed time to...”
“To what? Research? While you were tearing yourself apart searching for me?” His eyes tracked across my face with the attention of someone cataloging damage I'd thought I was hiding.
“Have you told anyone what it does to you?
That your soul tears every time you use magic?
That you've been bleeding invisibly for a month?”
The answer stuck in my throat.
“Gideon.” Quieter now. More dangerous. “Have you told them?”
“No.”
“So you're dying quietly and calling it protection. You're letting yourself fall apart rather than admitting you need help, and you're acting like that's noble instead of stupid.”
I stared at him. “How do you know about the soul tears?”
Ronan went still. “What?”
“I never told you. Never told anyone.” My chest tightened with the implications. “How do you know my soul's been tearing?”
He looked at me like the answer should be obvious.
“I felt it. Every time you pushed magic through the amplification, every time you stitched yourself back together. The tether...” He gestured helplessly between us.
“I could feel you bleeding even when I couldn't feel anything else. Even when the bond was barely there, I knew you were hurting yourself.”
“It's not about being noble,” I said, and my voice came out harder than I meant. “It's about priorities. Finding you mattered more than...”
“Than your life? You were willing to burn yourself hollow searching for me, and you think that's protecting anyone?”
“I think it's making sure the one person who can anchor me doesn't die alone in a forest while being used as a weapon!” The words came out louder than I'd intended, echoing across the water.
Ronan flinched.
We stood there in the growing dark, both of us breathing too hard, both of us vibrating with fear that was showing as anger because anger was easier than admitting we were terrified.
“So that's what this is,” Ronan said finally. His voice was quieter now but no less raw. “You're not trying to save me. You're trying to save yourself.”
“That's not—”
“It is.” He cut me off. “You just said it. I’m the one person who can anchor you.”
“Yes.” I forced the word out. “Yes. I need the tether. I need you alive. Both of those things are true and I'm not going to apologize for either of them.”
Ronan looked at me for a long moment. “What happens to you if I die?”
“I don't know exactly,” I said. The honesty tasted bitter. “Without it, the soul damage would progress faster.”
“So if I'd died out there—”
“You would've taken me with you eventually. Yes.”
Ronan's jaw worked. “That's what you meant. When you said I was your anchor.”
I forced myself to take a breath. To pull back from the edge before this became a fight we couldn't recover from. “It's more than tether strain. The soul damage is older than that. But the tether helps stabilize it.”
Ronan went very still. “How much older?”
I looked at the water instead of at him, because looking at him meant seeing the concern in his eyes and I wasn't ready for that yet. “Years. It doesn't matter. What matters is that I'm managing it.”
Ronan didn't respond. Just stood there looking at me like he was trying to figure out if pushing would help or make things worse.
Then he turned away. Looked at the lake for a long moment, at the way the last light caught on the surface.
“We're both covered in blood and dirt,” he said finally. “And we've been shouting at each other for ten minutes when what we actually need is to get clean and figure out what comes next.”
He stripped out of his jeans and stepped into the lake without waiting for a response, the water closing around him as he waded deeper. He turned back when he was waist deep, water dark around his pale skin.
“You coming?”
It felt like a challenge and a truce at once.
I stripped down and followed him in.
The cold hit hard. Took my breath for a moment before my body adjusted, before I could wade deeper to where Ronan stood waiting.
The water was clear enough to see the bottom even in the fading light, clean enough that I could feel a month of grime and blood and fear starting to wash away with each movement.
Ronan had soap in his hand. He worked it through his hair methodically, scrubbing at dirt and dried blood with the focused attention of someone trying to reclaim their body after it had stopped feeling like theirs.
I did the same. Let the water and soap do their work while my mind processed everything that had been said, everything I'd finally admitted out loud.
“I'm sorry,” I said after a while. “For not telling you. For keeping the tether bond secret when you had a right to know.”
Ronan rinsed soap from his hair. “I'm sorry for running. For thinking leaving was the only way to keep everyone safe. I thought...” He stopped. Started again. “I thought becoming feral and dying alone was better than staying and being used as a weapon against you.”
“That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.”
“Yeah. I'm aware.”
We washed in silence for a while longer, the cold water doing its work, washing away the physical evidence of a month apart even if it couldn't touch the damage underneath.
“Anything else?” Ronan asked. His voice was quiet but steady. “Any other secrets you're sitting on that I should know about?”
I stopped scrubbing and let my hands fall still in the water.
“Yes,” I said.
Ronan waited. Not pushing, just giving me space to say it.
“There's a curse,” I said. “My father gave it to me years ago, before I left him. It's woven into my soul structure, designed to consume my life force slowly.”
“Can it be removed?”
“Only when he's dead.” The truth tasted like ash. “It's tied to his life force. When he dies, the curse dies with him. Until then, I manage.”
“And if you kill him before the curse finishes you off?”
“Then I survive. The curse breaks, the consumption stops, and I get to live without constantly stitching myself back together.” I met his eyes across the water. “But that means killing my father. Which is a line I've been avoiding to cross.”
“Why?” Direct. Honest. “From everything I've seen, he's earned it.”
I looked at the stars starting to show overhead, at the way they reflected in the dark water, and tried to find words for moral complications that felt less important now than they had a year ago.
“Because once I cross that line, once I decide that killing him is acceptable, I become the kind of person who kills their own blood.
And I've spent my entire life trying not to be what he raised me to be.”
“You're nothing like him.”
“I'm more like him than I want to be,” I said quietly. “Same bloodline. Same capacity for manipulation and control dressed up as protection.”
“That's not the same.” Ronan moved closer through the water “Capacity isn't action. You've spent a long time choosing to be different. That counts for more than shared blood.”