Chapter Nineteen Goodbye
Chapter Nineteen: Goodbye
Lysandra
The deputy arrives with the delivery at half past nine, and something in the way he moves gives him away immediately.
I've spent a year as Luna of a pack. I know what a man looks like when he's been told not to say something and can't quite hold the shape of not saying it.
He sets the tonic bottles on the counter, answers my first question about Cassian's schedule with a perfectly neutral sentence, and then his eyes go sideways for exactly one second.
That's all I need.
I pour him a cup of tea he doesn't have time to drink, ask him two more questions about the case load, and by the time he's backing toward the door I have the whole shape of it: the Alliance high command pushing for a closed file, Cassian absorbing their pressure without passing any of it down.
And Gideon in the water cell making one demand on repeat.
One meeting. Just one. Then he'll sign.
The deputy leaves. I finish my coffee.
Fine, I think. One meeting.
Not for Cassian's case — though that matters. For me. This is a loose end I should tie myself, with my own hands, so that I know it's done.
***
The stairs down to the cells smell the same as they did when I was the one descending them in shackles.
Cold mineral air and iron and something underneath that doesn't have a name.
I'm on the outside of the door this time.
From the moment my footsteps reach the bottom of the stairs, his eyes find me. I can feel them before I see him — that specific weight of a gaze that has been waiting.
I stop at the iron window and look.
The silver chains run from the wall rings to his wrists. His face is marked up. Whatever the last two weeks have contained for him, it shows.
I look at him the way I'd look at a street I used to live on.
Not without recognition. Just without any particular feeling attached to it.
He speaks first.
"Lysandra." His voice is stripped.
"I need you to know — Lilian and I, nothing ever happened.
She was my fated mate before the bond failed.
I looked after her because she was unwell, that's all.
But you have to know — my wolf knows, I know — you are my mate.
You were always my mate. I never touched her.
Not once. I made mistakes, so many mistakes, but I never betrayed you in that way. Not once."
He stops. He's watching me with everything he has left.
I let the silence rest for a moment.
"I believe you," I say.
His eyes light up with something desperate and bright. He leans forward against the chains.
"Nothing happened between you. You didn't kiss her, you didn't sleep with her." I keep my voice even. "I believe that completely."
"Then—"
"It doesn't matter."
The light goes out.
His mouth stays open. He stares at me.
"Doesn't—"
"It doesn't matter," I say again, the same way. "I'm not leaving because you were unfaithful. I'm leaving because you didn't love me."
"That's not—" His voice cracks. "That's not true. I love you. I do love you, you have to—"
"You love me." I tilt my head. "You love me, so you gave her everything that was best. You love me, so she came first, every time, in every decision. You love me."
I look at him. "Then why didn't it ever feel like anything?"
His mouth opens. Closes.
Nothing comes out.
"If that's what your love looks like," I say, "it's too cheap. I don't want it."
He breaks apart in front of me. The tears come fast, running through the dried blood on his face, and he shakes his head and keeps shaking it.
"No. No — Lysandra, I'll change, I swear to you I'll change, please.
Please. You loved me once, you know you did.
The Cold Spring — you remember — the elders made you go alone, in winter, to pray for a whole night in the ice water.
Nobody does that. Nobody stays in that water all night if they don't—" He's breathing in uneven pulls, barely keeping the words together.
"The Moon Goddess witnessed us. She blessed us. That's real, that's — that was real."
I look at him for a moment.
"She didn't," I say.
"Lysandra—"
"The Moon Goddess never blessed us."
I turn around.
"Goodbye, Gideon."
The corridor back to the staircase is long. My footsteps are the only sound.
The Cold Spring.
I remember the cold. The way the water felt like it had weight as well as temperature, pressing against every part of me from every direction. I was in it from midnight to dawn. The elders watched from the bank. I didn't move.
I wasn't thinking about the marriage. Four days old, maybe five.
I wasn't thinking about Gideon at all. A husband who had only just regained consciousness.
The moon was up, and I was looking at it, and I was thinking about the man who walked away on a snowy night. The way he'd looked at me.
Moon Goddess, I thought, standing in ice water up to my chest, watching the light on the surface. If you hear anything. If any of this is real.
I failed someone good. I don't know if I'm allowed to ask anything, after that. But if you're listening: watch over him. Whatever it is he wants —
Let him have it.
I push open the heavy doors at the top of the stairs.
The sun hits my face all at once.
***
He's leaning against the black car with his arms crossed and his jaw set and the specific expression he gets when he's annoyed about something and is not going to say what it is unless pushed.
The expression of a man who has been standing in a parking lot with his feelings for the last twenty minutes.
I stop on the steps and look at him.
He looks back.
He's generating enough atmospheric pressure for two people.
Something in my chest cracks open.
He watches me laugh at him from the steps of the building I just spent twenty minutes in visiting my ex-husband, and somehow this makes him look more put out, which makes the whole thing worse, which means I'm still smiling when I reach him.
He doesn't move away from the car.
"Done?" he says.
"Done."
He looks at me. Something in his face is working on adjusting.
I step in close, reach up, and straighten the collar of his jacket, which doesn't need straightening. He goes still.
He's actually very easy to manage, for a man everyone else in this city is afraid of.
"Let's go home," I say.
He looks at me for one more second.
Then he opens the car door.
The sun is warm and the air smells like the city coming out of winter, and behind me that building holds everything that used to weigh on me, and none of it is following me into this car.
I get in.