Chapter 43
I stop.
My words ring in the air between us. I stare at Stella, at the way shock has sliced through the compassion and anguish on her face. Her flushed cheeks are wet with tears, tendrils of her beautiful hair framing her face and falling over the front of her rose-pink nightgown.
I don’t want my revenge anymore. I just want you.
That declaration levels the mountains of heartbreak in one thunderclap.
My vision fills with her. With Stella, Princess Isabelle Louise of Aursailles, my human wife. My mind goes back to the moment I entered our wedding chamber and removed her veil, when I saw her face and those soft doe eyes for the first time. I’d tried to suppress it then, but I’d known from that moment when our gazes met that everything was about to change. I knew she would ruin me, that she would be my destruction. My greatest weakness. This whole time, I’ve been fighting for shreds of control—because since my mother, I’ve not had anything to lose.
All these years, everything has come back to loss. Pain of past loss, fear of future loss.
What if life isn’t about fighting loss at every turn, but embracing love whenever you are privileged to encounter it?
I love Stella. Each time I look at her, she grows in beauty. With every word out of her mouth, my estimation of her virtue only increases. She’s lovelier in this simple nightgown than she was in last night’s extravagant ballgown.
Now that I’ve said the words, it’s almost ridiculous how hard this realization hits me—how ridiculous that it is hitting me only now, when I have known this truth our entire marriage.
There is nothing I want in this world but her.
Least of all my revenge.
At the same time . . .
My brow lowers. “You mean more to me than making the High King pay. You’ve always meant more to me. But as long as he lives, you’re in danger.”
It’s as though saying those words brings my entire conflicted world back into its proper orbit. My shoulders sag, the tension flowing out of my body. Light and lightness fill me to the brim. I run both hands through my hair, and before I can stop it, a laugh escapes me.
The crushing burden is gone.
I am taller. Weightless.
I turn fully toward Stella, who watches me carefully, her lips parted. An unstoppable grin bursts across my face. Her eyes widen, and color floods her cheeks as she swallows. Her tears have dried. My arms ache for her.
“I have to kill him,” I breathe, still grinning like a fool.
Stella blinks thrice at me.
“If I kill him after we get him off the throne,” I continue, realizing I haven’t explained myself and sudden change of demeanor to her, “you can live. With me. I won’t have to give you up. I can put our child on the throne.”
Her brows come together in a skeptical knot. It’s so adorable, I cannot help my laughter. Then I can bear the distance between us no longer and rush across the room, grabbing her by the shoulders so suddenly her mouth opens.
“You don’t understand, do you?” I say, beaming down at her. “Everything is the same. But everything is so different. What I’m trying to accomplish is the same. The High King needs to be off that throne. Once and for all. But I’m not doing it to avenge my mother. It’s what you said yesterday—you were wrong, but you were so right! You said the difference between me and my father is that he was fighting against and I was fighting for. Except I haven’t been. I’ve been fighting against him as hard as he’s been fighting against me. But I understand now.”
That wasn’t very coherent. She’s still staring at me as though I’ve sprouted a few new heads. I suck on my teeth, trying to find the right words. “What I’m trying to say is that I am going to fight for you, Stella. I will fight for you with everything I have. I will play dirty if I must. Faradir has reigned long enough. As long as he lives, he is a threat to you. So I will kill him.”
“You cannot kill him, Ash,” she says, breaking her silence. “You’ll lose your throne if you do.”
“True.” I breathe hard, staring at her puffy pink cheeks. I stumble back to my desk and crash into my chair, burying my face in my arms. It’s so sudden, this overwhelming relief—even in the face of Stella’s observation. I don’t even know what to do with it all! How to live. How to walk. How to feel.
I look up, and there she is, still standing by the door. My whole life, I’ve had to be strong for myself. No one else did it for me. It’s why I did all those stupid things as a child. Drinking poison and hunting for tarlith cats and so forth. I was trying to prove I was strong. Strong enough to be a worthy successor to my father.
Strong enough for my father to love me.
Then this sweet, soft woman walks into my life, and shows me what true strength is. She stands there, unshaken, unfaltering, though she looks as though she could break at the least provocation. She doesn’t break.
She’s stronger than I ever was.
I feel as though I’ve spent my entire life on a quest for the wrong thing, but now I know what I should be searching for—only to discover that I’ve had it all along.
It doesn’t matter if Stella has magic or not. It never did. She doesn’t need it. She’s strong enough, just as herself. Great Kings, she must be exhausted after this last twenty-four hours. She has hardly recovered from sickness and look at what I’ve dragged her through!
I meet her gaze, shoving aside talk of kings and thrones for the moment. “I owe you an apology. Quite a number of them.”