Chapter 126 Rhea
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Six: Rhea
“Saville is a small town about three hours to the south of Celatum,” Nox explains as we slow the horses to a trot when we spot the first home on the town’s edge, its walls built with white stone and roof thatched with straw.
“I figured it would be better to go somewhere where I’m still anonymous,” he adds on quietly.
I draw my fingers closer to his, the only solace I can offer as the reminder of what King Dolian had done to Immie plays briefly in my head.
She likely wasn’t the only one who knew Nox was mage, but even if she was, the town of Celatum had been searched because the king was looking for a guard named Flynn who had stolen the princess from the tower.
It would be foolish to return and risk being spotted, but my heart still ached over the way Nox spoke as if he was ashamed.
“What happened there wasn’t your fault.”
He sighs softly. “Neither was it yours.” The following silence gives away what we both feel: We may not be fully responsible, but neither are we completely blameless. Another tally for King Dolian hurting others in our names.
A wide road opens up for us to follow into the town, and Xander and Daje flank us as buildings begin to take shape in the darkness ahead.
More of the same one-story stone homes dot the landscape, the grass tall enough that it brushes against the horses’ legs.
The air is fragrant with a sweet smell, and my stomach eagerly reminds me that I haven’t eaten since… I’m not sure when.
“We’ll make sure to get some food at the inn,” Nox says in near my ear in response to the sound.
“I can’t even remember the last time I was hungry.
” It’s meant to be an innocuous statement, but I don’t realize just how careless it is until Nox tenses behind me, the sensation of his magic crackling in the air like the beginnings of a summer storm.
Though I’ve avoided looking at myself in the mirror for a long while, I know that my body bears the evidence of my time apart from him in more ways than one.
How different do I look to Nox? Can he still see the woman that he loves in this new version of me?
Or has the emaciation of my body—of my mind and soul—changed me too much?
Daje spots a sign that directs us to the stables behind an apothecary shop and down a small hill.
We drop the horses off after gathering the bags and then make our way back up to the main road until the largest building comes into view.
Our reflections in the windows as we pass keep my breaths quick, fear that the guards are already hiding in one of them forcing my magic to coil together in my chest. Nox and I follow behind Daje, Xander walking behind us as we step onto a creaking wooden deck and into a noticeably warmer space.
“Welcome to the Saville Inn,” a man says from behind a dark wooden counter. “How many rooms, travelers?”
Daje looks back at us, his pointer finger raised. “Just one?” he asks slowly, his gaze bouncing between Nox and I.
I look up at Nox to find him already staring down at me, his face serious but otherwise unreadable. “Would you like your own room?”
“No,” I answer, my brows pulling in. “Do you want your own room?”
At that, the corners of his mouth lift just a fraction, and I see him again. “I want to be wherever you are. Always. For as long as you’ll have me.”
I reach out for his hand as our gazes hold. My fingers twitch with the urge to trace the stubble at his jaw and that small smile on his lips, to run my hands through the longer strands of his hair as a way to anchor myself to a time before… just before.
“Okay, then,” Daje drawls, turning back to answer the man.
Xander brushes past us, close enough for his shoulder to graze Nox’s. “I need to speak with you.”
Nox keeps his eyes on me, the silver in them shining brighter as he answers. “No, thanks.”
My cousin grumbles under his breath as he continues forward to stand next to Daje.
“You should speak with him,” I say softly, squeezing his hand. “We can trust him.”
“Can we?” he asks, and I’m surprised to find the question is genuine. At my nod, a strange look crosses his face, one that I’m sure I’m reading wrong because—
“I had bad luck the last time I stayed at an inn,” Daje interrupts as he turns around to hand us the key to our room.
“Let’s hope that doesn’t repeat here.” His eyes gleam beneath the light of candles spaced throughout the inn, but he doesn’t clarify any further as we all climb wooden stairs to the second floor, the art on the walls passing by in a blur as I force my mind to focus on the feel of my hand in Nox’s.
Daje and Xander quickly go over our plans—rest for a few hours and then leave just before the sun rises—and then we are each in our rooms, Nox setting our bags down before stretching his arms overhead.
I clasp my own hands together, my gaze roaming over the room as Nox walks past me to the bathroom, light spilling out a few seconds later from the candles he’s lit within.
When he comes back out, a nervous energy thrums between us as we stare at each other.
It’s filled with all the words that are not so easily spoken but that are written so clearly on both of our faces.
But maybe that is for the best.
There was so much that happened, so many memories that I selfishly do not want to dwell on that keep trying to pull me back in.
It isn’t that I think avoiding them will do any good—I had learned my lesson regarding that—it has just been so damn long since I have held Nox.
Been held by him. So many weeks of harboring a loneliness that bled from my heart and into my veins until I thought I could die from it.
Until I almost did.
And I just… I want him. Even if I don’t deserve him anymore, even if the relief he brings me is only temporary.
“There are clean clothes and toiletries in the bag,” he says, his voice low. “I can grab us some food while you shower.”
He takes a single step towards the door, and I feel something tug me in his direction. My magic or maybe something more, but I don’t waste time questioning it. “Or you could join me,” I suggest, voice shaking as I flatten my palms over the wool cloak at my thighs.
His swallow is rough, as is the silence that crashes down on me when he doesn’t respond. I retreat, again keenly aware of the fact that I’ve changed. Months under the abuse of King Dolian had left me gaunt with regret and guilt, and I can’t exactly blame Nox if that is too much for him.
“It’s okay,” I rush out, already backtracking towards the bathroom. “I’ll just—”
“Rhea.” He takes tentative steps towards me until the heat of his body permeates my clothing, stoking a different kind of heat to life at the base of my spine.
His hands frame my face, thumbs brushing tenderly over my cheeks.
For a long while, he doesn’t say anything, just holds me like I’m precious.
Like he can’t believe we are both here. But then he inhales deeply, and his forehead drops against mine.
“I’m worried about you,” he confesses, the words rough with emotion.
“You’re here—tangible and real in my hands—but your mind is so far away.
And I don’t know how to reach you. I can’t—” My eyes close at the crack in his voice, at the stuttered breath that follows, as I grip onto his wrists.
“I failed you. I failed you, Rhea. And all I keep thinking about is how Xander was right. You needed me, and I wasn’t there.
” He leans his head back, thumbs brushing away my fallen tears.
“I wasn’t there for you, and you suffered. You deserve—”
“Do you love me?” I interject, sliding my hands from his wrists to either side of his face. Keeping him close.
“Yes,” he answers without hesitation, without any consideration, even if the question looks as if it’s caught him off guard. “But what I’ve done—what I will do—in the name of that love should terrify you, Rhea.”
“What if it doesn’t?” I ask him, the pounding of my heart heavy in my ears.
“What if I love you just as much? What if I’m already the monster you’re so afraid you’re turning into?
” I remembered what he said, back in his room on the night I had told him about my nightmares.
About all King Dolian had done to me then.
He wanted to choke the world in his shadows to keep me safe.
I had already seen a glimpse of what he would do on the other side of that promise.
I had been taken from him, and I had been hurt.
Yet the version of Nox who stands before me, retribution flaring in his eyes, doesn’t frighten me.
Nothing about him does because I know that he does everything for me.
But what had I done? There were lines crossed—moral ones.
Intimate ones. The king hadn’t managed to fuck me, but did it matter when he had touched me?
When I let him kiss me? When I had given up on Nox?
My hands fall from his face because, gods, what right do I have to act like we could just have a single moment together after everything?
“Hey,” he whispers, catching my hands and resisting when I try to pull them away. “Please, talk to me, Sunshine. Let me in.” Though he stands tall, he might as well be on his knees for the way he begs me.
I shake my head, chewing on my lower lip as I battle to corral my anger and grief and guilt.
But Nox’s affect on me has always been something stronger than I could fight and this is no exception.
“I know about Haylee,” I start, forcing myself to look at him, even as his eyes widen like he’s just had a secret exposed.
“And I wish I could say that the moment I learned of the betrothal, I knew it was fake. Or that I thought the information was wrong. I wish I could say that there wasn’t a small part of me that always thought the two of you go well together.
” My eyes bounce between his as his outline blurs.
But he deserves the truth. He should know every way I had failed him too.
“But I can’t. I doubted you—I doubted us—and those doubts led me down a path that can never be undone.
And it wasn’t because I don’t love you, Nox, because I do.
Stars above, do I love you. It was because I hated the thought that you could love someone else.
That I would have to exist in a world where you aren’t mine anymore.
And I wasn’t strong enough to keep fighting, and I—”
My own tears choke me as the taste of salt stains my lips. And Nox… He looks at me as if I’ve utterly destroyed him. Like I’ve dismantled him piece by piece until he, like me, is only a collection of broken parts.
“I’m sorry,” I breathe through a fractured sob, the words sawing from that hollow place within me. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t be better for you.”
“Gods above, Sunshine, I did not get betrothed to Haylee. The council tried; they even announced it at my coronation, but there was nothing official between us. I never touched her. I do not, could not, want her. Ever. There is only you. There will only ever be you, and if you think there is anything you can say that would change my mind, I’m telling you right now that you’re wrong.
” I know his words should bring me comfort, but they only amplify the fact that I had done so much worse.
“King Dolian kissed me,” I say, barely louder than a whisper. “I let him do it because I needed something from him. A favor.”
“Rhea, don’t take on guilt for something you had no control over.” His voice is so gentle, eyes so full of that regret for me—me—that something within me snaps.
“You’re not listening!” I bark, forcing myself away from him as magic presses at the space between my ribs.
“I let him! I let him touch me. I let him fill my head with poisonous thoughts about you. About love.” I undo the clasp of the cloak and throw it to the ground before pulling off my shirt.
Standing in the faint candlelight, I undo the laces of my pants, tugging them down just far enough to show Nox the one thing that could never be hidden from him.
“He changed me forever, and he knows it.” And now Nox knows it too.
There is a pause, a moment frozen in time, in which Nox inhales sharply at the sight of my scarred hip.
I watch the shadows of the room creep towards him, his jaw clenched so tightly that I can see his pulse ticking along it.
And then everything explodes. Between one blink and the next, darkness is splattered against the walls and the ceiling, as if Nox threw paint instead of shadows.
He claims the distance I created and I hold myself still, preparing for his wrath.
It won’t be the same as the king’s, and that knowledge somehow makes it worse because I know Nox’s anger won’t come in the form of barbed words or pounding fists.
It’ll come as soft heartbreak. As a declaration that our love is no longer enough.
But, though anger carves deep lines into the center of his forehead, his voice is steady when he says, “You didn’t make those choices because they were never really choices to begin with.
He caged you. He laid his hands on you. He manipulated you because he knew that it was the only way to break you.
” My shoulders rock as I cry, the safety of Nox forcing my walls down.
“But he didn’t, love. He didn’t break you.
Because you’re here now, and whatever you did, whatever you had to do to survive that torment, I would never hold against you.
” Two fingers gently press beneath my chin, making my eyes meet his.
“There is nothing that you could tell me that would erase the way I feel about you, Rhea. Don’t you see?
I’m infinitely yours. In this life and every other. ”
Breaths rush past my lips, and though I am raw—sliced open and exposed—it’s not nearly as suffocating as it once was. It still hurts, and the memories still linger just beyond the edges of my mind, but in this moment, there is just Nox and his devotion to me.
“Hear me when I say that, while there are men who believe in the gods and others who worship magic itself, I find my divine holiness in you. You are the only thing worth believing in.”