Chapter 20 #2
Peri bowed as well, deeper than Gerick had ever seen her bow to anyone, though her mouth tightened in the way it did when emotion struck too close for comfort.
The Great Luna moved toward the stone where the Nushtonia rested. Her steps made no sound at all. The grass straightened in her wake. The book did not pulse. Did not shift. Did not breathe.
For the first time since Gerick had held it, the cursed thing looked afraid.
Good. He hoped it was.
The goddess looked down at the Nushtonia for a long moment before lifting her gaze to him. Her eyes were the silver of every moon he had ever stood beneath.
“You are hurting.”
Gerick’s jaw clenched. “That is not important.”
“Pain is always important to the one who created the heart feeling it.”
He said nothing. Because he could not.
The Great Luna stepped closer, her bare feet silent against moss and stone. The hem of her gown trailed across the burnt line his magic had carved into the earth, and where it passed, the moss knit itself back together.
“You feel Myanin through the book’s distortion, not through the fullness of the bond I blessed between you.”
Gerick’s chest tightened. “Then what is this?”
“A tether,” she said. “A path formed by blessing, choice, and need. It kept her life tied to yours when death should have claimed one or both of you. It gave her time. It gave you both shelter.”
Shelter.
The word struck him strangely. Not cage. Not claim. Shelter.
Gerick lifted his eyes to hers. “You said our lives were tied.”
“They are.”
His breath left him slowly.
The Great Luna’s eyes softened. “But tied lives are not always tied destinies.”
Peri went utterly still beside him. He heard her breath catch and hold.
Gerick felt the words enter him like a blade so sharp that the wound came before the pain.
“I don't understand.”
“You do,” she said. “That is why it hurts.”
His hands curled again, but this time no magic answered. The leather of his gloves whispered against itself and went silent.
“I love her.”
“I know.”
“I would never harm her.”
“I know that too.”
“She is my mate.”
The Great Luna did not look away. “Yes.”
The single word should have comforted him. Instead it tore something open in his chest that he had been carefully, stubbornly, foolishly holding closed.
“Then how,” he began, voice roughened beyond recognition, "can her heart be answering another?”
The question hung in the clearing.
There it was. No pride. No command. No claim. Just the broken center of a male who had loved with everything he had and still felt the ground shifting beneath him.
The Great Luna’s expression held sorrow, but not regret.
“Because Myanin’s heart was fractured long before she met you. You did not fail to heal it, Gerick. You gave her safety enough to discover where the wound truly was.”
He looked away. The forest blurred at the edges of his vision, every shadow softening as moisture rose he refused to acknowledge.
He would rather have faced an army. He would rather have bled.
“She needed me,” he said.
“Yes.”
“But she may not choose me.”
The Great Luna stepped closer. The air around her smelled like rain on ancient stone.
“Love that is true does not become false because it is not forever in the way you hoped.”
Gerick closed his eyes. He hated that. He hated it because some part of him recognized the truth in it.
Myanin had never deceived him. Great Luna, she had tried to give him what she thought a mate should give. Loyalty. Trust. Fierce defense. Even tenderness, in the rare moments she allowed herself to be seen.
But there had always been a door inside her she could not open for him. He had thought patience would eventually become the key. Perhaps he had mistaken patience for permission to wait outside a room never meant for him.
His breath shook. Just once. The smallest crack in a wall he had spent centuries building.
Peri made a small sound and turned away, wiping at her face with unnecessary aggression, the heel of her hand pressing hard against her cheekbone.
The Great Luna lifted one hand and touched Gerick’s chest, directly over his heart. Her palm was warmer than the night, warmer than fire, warmer than any precious memory.
Warmth moved through him, and truth, and in that truth, a form of comfort. Images flickered behind his closed eyes.
Myanin was laughing despite herself beside a fire, the firelight gilding the rare softness at the corner of her mouth.
Myanin was standing in blood and refusing to fall, jaw set, knees locked, hand still gripping the hilt of a blade that had been red for hours.
Myanin was asleep in a chair with his cloak wrapped around her shoulders, lashes dark against her cheeks, her breathing deep for the first time in days.
Myanin was looking at him with gratitude so deep that it had almost resembled peace.
Then Myanin was in darkness, reaching instinctively for Shade.
Not because Gerick had failed.
Because some parts of her had recognized that male before she had words for them.
Gerick opened his eyes. The Great Luna’s hand dropped, slow and reverent.
“What are you asking of me?” he said.
His voice was calm now. Too calm. The kind of calm that came when a warrior saw the battlefield clearly and understood exactly where the death blow would fall.
The Great Luna’s gaze saddened. “Not yet.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No,” she agreed. “It is mercy.”
A humorless breath left him, half scoff, half wound. “Mercy would be ignorance.”
“No. Ignorance would be a delay. Mercy is allowing you the dignity of choice before necessity takes it from you.”
The words settled over him.
Choice.
Gerick looked at the Nushtonia. His eyes moved over the dark cover and found nothing he had not already memorized.
He understood then. Not everything. Not the full shape of what was coming. But enough.