Chapter 104
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FOUR
I stood stunned in the empty tearoom after Rowan walked out.
A relief.
It should have been, perhaps.
But all I could see was my wife lying in our bed while I traced circles on her flat stomach and wondered if it would ever grow round with something that was entirely ours.
All I could hear was her telling me she wanted our children one day, and how it had been enough to steal my breath.
And now?
Now we were here, at a point where she wouldn’t even tell me that was a possibility. What the hell had happened to us?
Even as I asked the question, I knew.
I had happened to us.
When I left her at that inn, I thought I had considered every possible outcome, but I hadn’t accounted for this – for pushing her so far that she went from sleeping in my arms every night to saying it was a relief we didn’t have a child to worry about.
Kirill’s voice echoed in my head.
Neither of you seems to be fighting this one.
Spinning on my heel, I took off in the direction of her rooms. Like hell I wouldn’t fight for her.
With each step, I saw her shattered expression when she asked me if I wanted to know what the worst part was.
I had still been so frustrated with her choice and with her anger that I hadn’t quite let myself understand the magnitude of the tears pooling in her eyes.
She had told me on my balcony just how badly she didn’t want to be in love at all, for fear of losing that person. Who in their right minds would want to go through what Avani went through?
Then in the carriage after she killed my stepmother. I don’t want to live in a world where you’re not.
Even in my rooms, she had said it again. You knew that losing you was my worst fear.
So much resignation in her tone by then, and no fight at all.
I walked faster, a rare bit of panic overtaking me because I was starting to wonder if I had already lost her, if she had been gone from the moment she brought down a bolt of lightning with the force of the betrayal she felt.
When I got to her room, I pushed her door open without knocking.
“Lemmikki, I—” The words died on my lips when I heard the hitching sound of a sob.
Opening the door the rest of the way, I stepped inside to find her curled up on her bed, shaking with the tears she so rarely shed. Tears that were my undoing every time.
“Go away,” she choked out between sobs.
Like hell will I leave you like this, Lemmikki.
I hesitated for less than a second before I shut the door behind me, kicking my boots off and crossing the distance to the bed. She had her face buried in the pillow, looking so much smaller than the woman who had charged across a battlefield and tamed the storm itself to do her bidding.
“No.” I settled into the bed beside her, putting my arms around her and trying to lend her a small bit of my warmth like I had at the war front just before everything had gone up in flames.
“I never should have left you to begin with,” I said, feeling the truth of the words resound in my very bones, “and I’m sure as hell not going to do it again.”
I make mistakes, Lemmikki, but I rarely make the same one twice.
She huffed out something between a bitter laugh and a sob. “No matter what I want, right?”
I stilled. Would I walk away from her like this? Leave her to the grief for a life we both mourned instead of staying here to dredge it back from the ashes with her?
“Do you want me to leave, Lemmikki?”
If she said yes...I would force myself to go. For now. But it would take everything I had to do it.
Another wave of tears assaulted her, and she buried her face in my chest, her fists clinging to my shirt. “No.”
It was the only word she could get out. She was breaking. And I—I had broken her. Pain lanced through my chest, like it was cracking open from the inside out.
“I’m sorry, Lemmikki. I’m so sorry.” And I was.
Sorry for the pain she was in, sorry that she felt like she had to deal with it alone, and sorry for this entire war full of impossible decisions that were slowly destroying us both.
I pressed my lips into her hair, and she cried harder.
“Were you really relieved?” she asked me.
She didn’t have to clarify what she was talking about. I could have given her the rational explanation, all the reasons this would have been terrible timing for us to have a baby.
Instead, I gave her another jagged piece of my soul.
“No, Lemmikki,” I breathed out. “I wasn’t relieved. I wanted that—want that, more than anything. A child with you. A life with you.”
She pulled back, examining my features through a cloud of tears. “Then why don’t you care enough to respect what I want?”
I could debate that I cared too much to respect what she wanted, or explain to her that it wasn’t about respect at all. I would have done the same thing if it had been one of my cousins that Iiro set his sights on.
But those were arguments that would only lead us right back here.
I didn’t know how to let go of the part of myself that would go to any lengths to see her safe, but this… She might not be tortured by Iiro, but she was in agony all the same, only this time, I had caused it.
Was this really better? This reality where we had no life together, where she was sobbing alone in her bedroom over the loss of a future we had barely gotten the chance to imagine?
I squeezed my eyes shut, seeing it all over again. Her head on a spike. Her mouth open in a scream. Her blood coating the snow, just as it had the day she was flogged.
Those were always possibilities in war. As my wife, she would live her entire life targeted. Hell, that might have been true in Lochlann, too. There were rebels in her own kingdom.
The last time I had been convinced with certainty that we would both die, I had been wrong. And I was on the verge of losing her anyway.
Could I stomach the idea of her being in danger, if it meant a lifetime by her side? If it meant keeping her from feeling this way ever again?
Every part of me rebelled at the idea, but I considered her bright green eyes glistening with tears, begging me to understand, the hands that were still clutched in my shirt, the body and soul that were intrinsically mine – mine to protect.
From Iiro’s threats, but from this, too.
I took a deep breath, preparing to explain to her why I had left to begin with. We could never hope to move forward if she didn’t understand that much.
Talking did not come naturally to me. None of this did—but for her, I had to try.
“Before the Summit,” I began, pausing when her eyebrows rose.
She was listening, though, and her tears had died down to a few residual sniffles. So I could do this, offer her this as a small piece of penance.
“Before the Summit, I was living my life like it was someone else’s. The things I had to do, the people I had to kill and brand and unclan, the person I had to be to keep up a show of strength so that no one might guess my people were vulnerable under my father’s rule... All of it was slowly turning me into the monster everyone thought I was.”
“You were never a monster.” Conviction bled into her tone, but she hadn’t been on my father’s missions.
She hadn’t seen the carnage I had wrought, whatever my reasons. I shook my head at her denial.
“Everything I did, I did for the sake of the clan.” That hadn’t made it right. If anything, sometimes it had only made my resentment grow. “For the people my father was trying to hurt. The rare times we went to the cabin were the only times I felt human, and even then, we had all but stopped going. So you weren’t wrong when you called me a broken shell of a person.”
She flinched at the memory, and I instinctively ran my hand up and down her arm, chasing the reaction away. Reminding myself that she was here now, and that my father was gone.
“That’s exactly what I was,” I assured her, shaking my head at the truth I couldn’t deny. “Living each day waiting for the next horrible thing I had to do to my people, for my people, and wondering if all the good I was trying to do would ever be enough to make up for the bad. I was starting to believe it wouldn’t.”
Though sometimes, I still believed that. She wrapped her arm around mine as if she heard the thought, returning the comforting gesture I had offered mere moments ago. Warmth spread through me, and I pulled her tighter against my chest where she had always fit so perfectly.
“I was starting to believe none of it mattered,” I went on. “And then… And then I saw you.”
Her breath hitched, and she pulled back enough to look up at me. Another wave of tears spilled down her cheeks and I moved my hands to her face, brushing the wetness away with my thumbs.
It was still hard to believe that these hands—hands that had taken more lives than I could count—were capable of tenderness when it came to her. Only her.
“I thought that I had lost my capacity to be surprised by anyone. Or anything, really. Yet there you were, with your acerbic wit and your dangerous temper and your unending fearlessness.”
She had been so infuriating. So unexpected. So storms-damned alluring, even when I didn’t want her to be.
Another admission fell from my lips. “And the truth is, you were right, too, when you called me selfish.”
She shook her head adamantly—or as adamantly as she could with half of her face buried in the pillow.
“I don’t think you’re selfish, Evander,” she insisted. “I said that what you said sounded selfish. I have seen you time after time put everyone and everything ahead of yourself, including me.”
Though her argument eased something inside of me, she didn’t know how wrong she was. I was absolutely selfish when it came to her. I always had been.
“Until I didn’t,” I countered. “The thing is, that it had been months since I even felt like smiling, and suddenly, I found myself resisting the urge to laugh at every turn. I felt…whole when you were around, even then.”
And already so opposed to the idea of her being anywhere else. With anyone else.
I felt as much as saw the air whoosh out of her.
“Der’mo, Lemmikki.” The words were spewing forth from my lips now, each damning confession coming faster than the last. “Part of me honestly wonders if I would have called in that blood debt even if you hadn’t been about to marry Korhonan. I think I might have done anything to make you mine, no matter the consequences.”
I more than thought about it. Looking back, I was certain that I never could have let her walk away with Korhonan, not when she had felt like mine from the first time I asked her to dance. I hadn’t understood that feeling at the time, but I recognized it now, the raw possessiveness that stemmed from the deepest part of my being.
“Then, I was selfish again when I kissed you, knowing that it wasn’t something you could possibly consent to under the circumstances. I knew I held power over you, and I promised myself I wouldn’t take advantage of that.” But you were so storms-damned gorgeous, standing in my shirt, sleeping in my bed, so perfect and so very mine.
“But every part of me was drawn to every part of you, and I had never wanted anything in my entire life as badly as I wanted you that day in the cabin. I hated myself for that.”
And her, for a time being, but that didn’t seem pertinent just now.
A muscle tensed in her jaw and she placed a hand on my chest.
“Don’t make that something it wasn’t,” she ordered. “I already loved you then, and I wanted you, too. More than anything.”
That may have been true, but it wouldn’t have been enough for either of us under the circumstances. For all that she hated having her decisions made now, she would have grown to resent the hell out of me if she had been forced to stay at my side, if she had never truly had a choice.
“But the entire situation was convoluted by you being a prisoner,” I reminded her gently. “So yes, when your father came, I told you to go. It was, perhaps, the first unselfish thing I did where you were concerned. You did need that time, Lemmikki. You needed space to heal and process and consider what you really wanted.”
We had never talked about it since her return to Bear, but I remembered that day in the sparring room, when she referenced all of her anger. We had both let the subject drop, too afraid to tempt fate with the fragile bit of peace we had eked out.
But now we were here, drowning in the wake of all the things we had left unspoken for far too long.
I waited for her to argue, but she tugged her bottom lip between her teeth, nodding slowly.
“I can concede to that,” she acknowledged.
A small weight lifted from my chest, and I went on.
“So, I told myself I would give that to you, even if it meant that you went back to Korhonan. That I would respect whatever decision you made.” Some small part of me had known that it was a possibility when I sent her away, however little I had wanted to admit it.
The smallest smirk tugged at my lemmikki’s lips.
“How did that work out for you?” she challenged.
A grin tugged at my own mouth in response.
It had worked out perfectly well…eventually. I thought back to the day I had gotten the letter, trying to recall exactly what had changed my mind and coming up with nothing but the blinding panic I had felt whenever I pictured her spending her life with someone else.
Once again, I wrapped my arms around her, reminding myself that it was a future that hadn’t come to pass.
“I hardly remember deciding to leave,” I explained. “I got Korhonan’s bird about marrying you...and I didn’t think. I told Taras I was going instead of him, and I threw a trunk together, and I left. I knew that there would be consequences for Bear, and I still left.”
That was the crux of this story, the part that mattered. To understand why I left her, she needed to first understand how far I would have gone to have her, even then.
Let alone to save her.
“Even when we found out what Iiro had done, I couldn’t honestly bring myself to regret it when it meant I had you.” Even now.
A week’s worth of bodies to burn in the courtyard of my home, and I still wouldn’t take back my decision to make her mine, even when it made me every bit the monster she thought I wasn’t.
“So yes.” I traced the line of her arm with my fingers, memorizing the feel of it, just as I had the night I left. “I have always been selfish where you are concerned. You said I should try putting emotion into the things I do, but that’s all I seem to know how to do with you. Logically, I knew that you wouldn’t want to go back to Lochlann. That you would hate me for that.”
Though I hadn’t prepared for this level of anguish. I had expected her anger, not her tears.
“But I felt such blind panic every time I thought about something happening to you, that I convinced myself it would be better for you to be alive and unhappy than dead. I thought you would move on someday, have a life, still be this amazing, fiery light in an otherwise dark world, and I couldn’t handle the idea of that light being snuffed out.”
Those things weren’t necessarily less true now, but I could acknowledge that she didn’t see it the same way.
“And now?” she prodded like she had heard what I hadn’t said.
I let out a slow sigh, tucking a curl behind her ear so I could see her features clearly.
“Now…I still can’t handle it,” I told her plainly. “But I can’t handle seeing you like this, either, and I sure as hell can’t handle losing you.”
From the moment she had stalked across the battlefield and slapped me in the face, I had watched the light in her eyes dim a little more with each of our interactions. Until now.
She looked up at me through her long lashes, eyes sparkling with the first fragment of hope they had held since her return.
“What are you saying?” she breathed.
I’m saying that I will cede this war to you, even if it kills me.
“I’m saying that if what you need from me is to know that I will never again take that choice from you, then...I won’t.” The words nearly stuck in my throat, but I forced them out anyway.
If this was the price I paid to keep her, to never again hear her broken sobs and know that I had been the one to cause them, then I would find a way.
She held my gaze. “Even if my life is in danger? Even if you think there’s no other way out?”
I closed my eyes, trying to shut away the visceral memory of the moment I had gotten Korhonan’s note, the panic and the terror and the unwavering certainty that I wouldn’t be enough to keep her from dying a gruesome death at the hands of our enemy.
We had come through that on the other side, though. Against the odds, against reason, against all practical hope, we were both still here.
Besides, there was no alternative. I had made that choice already.
Still, I couldn’t look at her perfect features while I promised not to stop her from walking toward her own demise.
“Even then,” I gritted out. “But can you at least tell me you will try to be careful?”
“Evander, I will always fight to make my way back to you.” The sound of my name on her lips affected me the way it always did, searing right through to my soul.
I opened my eyes, willing myself to see her face as it was now, not the bloody, broken version I had conjured from the darkest parts of my mind. I had to take her at her word.
She had always been a fighter, even before she had raised an army in a couple of weeks and tamed the skies themselves. She would fight to come back to me, and I had to believe that she would succeed.
“All right.” I relented. “I promise you, even if your life is in danger, even if I believe there is no way out, I will always be honest with you. I will respect your decision...whatever it is.” I will walk by your side to that fate, though, Lemmikki. Where you go, I go, and I will still die before I let someone hurt you. “I swear it on my life.”
“No,” she all but yelled, startling me. “That just means the next time you think you’re going to die, you won’t see the need to uphold it. I want you to swear it on my life.”
How very Socairan of you, Lemmikki.
There was no more sacred oath she could have asked me to take than one based upon the most precious thing in this world to me. Grasping her hand in mine, I made her the promise that would purchase the future we had dreamed about together.
As long as we lived long enough to see it through.
“I swear it on your life, Lemmikki.”