Chapter 22 Jace
JACE
Nice.
Real fucking nice, Jace.
Once again, my talent for saying the wrong thing has proven itself undefeatable.
No, not just the wrong thing. The worst thing a person could possibly say.
Don’t get me wrong—I’m so relieved he didn’t force her. That fear was always in the back of my mind, eating away at me. But for her to have agreed? To have consented?
This I could have never seen coming.
I know my reaction was uncalled for, but honestly? I’m heartbroken.
So I do the only thing I can possibly think of.
I get drunk.
Or as close to it as I can get off the flask in Dover’s bag.
The look on her face in that tent keeps replaying in my mind. How could I have said those things to her?
She sacrificed so much for Kai. To keep him safe, to keep Kylian from hunting us down and killing us one by one. She was brave. Selfless.
All the things I admire about her.
And yet, I called her a whore.
I finish up whatever vile liquid was in that flask and toss it on the ground, knocking my head back against the palm tree.
I keep fucking this up.
I don’t even know how or when it happened, but at some point over these last few months, I have come to belong to her in a way that I still can’t even fathom.
That pull to be near her is present even now as I glance down the beach toward the camp. She’s become my everything. My true north.
Dragging myself to my feet, I start down the stretch of sand.
There were so many moments that should have told me what was happening. I denied it and denied it until I no longer could. Until the need for her overrode everything in me—my will, my sense of duty, my entire essence.
Maybe it was the sound of her laughter that cracked my shell, or the sound of her breathing beneath me in the training ring.
Maybe it was that first time we kissed, on solstice when the veil between her pride and her desire thinned just enough to have her racing into my arms. Maybe it was after she bonded Furi.
When she leapt onto the ground and something shifted. The earth’s plates clicked into place.
Why did I spend so much time treating her like the enemy? Being angry? Trying to get her to hate me. Trying to hate her.
All that time was wasted. Because I was always meant to love her, and she was always meant to destroy me.
And gods, do I love her.
I turn my back on the black waves and slip inside the tent. Lavender eyes stop me dead in my tracks.
“You smell like a bar.”
Zadyn is asleep beside her, an arm slung over her lap while Kai snores from her other side.
I try to keep my voice soft. “Can we talk?”
She stares at me for a long moment. I stare back, willing my racing heart to stand down.
With a sigh, she slides Zadyn’s arm from her waist and steps outside to stand by the dying fire.
Her posture is standoffish—arms crossed, staring into the embers—and I don’t blame her.
I stuff my hands in my pockets, letting the quiet wash over us.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she finally says. “Like I’m damaged goods.”
“I don’t think you’re damaged goods.”
She hits me with an incredulous look.
“I don’t think you’re damaged goods,” I repeat. “Look, I’m—I’m sorry for being an ass.”
The words of a poet.
Her expression turns pained. “I never expected you to be angry with me for doing what I had to in order to survive.”
“I’m not mad at you,” I whisper, turning her to face me. “I am livid with myself for letting this happen. I should have gotten there sooner, I should have never let you be taken in the first place.”
“None of that was in your control,” she protests, lowering a fraction of her armor.
“It should have been.” My fingers brush over the scratches on her cheek and my heart clenches. “So many things should have been different.”
I lose myself in those eyes as they coax the truth from my unwilling tongue.
“I should have told Derek I couldn’t marry Sorscha. I should have stopped pushing you away at every turn. But the worst thing I did, the thing that haunted me every second since you were taken”—I step closer, gazing down at her—“is that I never told you I love you.”
A single tear slides down her cheek and I catch it with my thumb, erasing the evidence.
“If you had died not knowing—”
“I knew.” She shakes her head, her fingers sliding into the crooks of my arms. “I knew.”
I slip my hands into her hair and almost groan as my lips brush against hers.
Finally.
Furi chooses that moment to release a loud, disgruntled sigh. Our muscles lock, freezing us in place. Narrowed green orbs track me from behind Serena, filled with judgment as I wait for her to decide where we go next.
“We should get some sleep.”
Disappointment floods me as she draws back. I nod and follow her back into the tent, cursing the dragon in my head.
I watch the even rise and fall of Serena’s chest as she sleeps and allow myself to think of what might have been if I had just stopped fighting.
If I had realized in those moments of quiet solitude when her image danced across my mind—when I found myself following her scent without meaning to, when I couldn’t stay away, or worse, that I didn’t want to—that something in me was shifting, melting.
If I had just accepted that she would be the unraveling of my life’s design, maybe I would have had a fighting chance.
She is a storm. I would have been safer in the eye than trying to outrun her.