Chapter 36
Chapter
Thirty-Six
brENTON
I couldn’t sleep.
I lay on my side, facing the tent wall where Finley slept on the other side. Listening to her steady inhale and exhale. To the soft, distant thump of her heartbeat.
She still sounded like home.
I’d give anything to curl around her and draw her close.
Instead, I lay there, counting her breaths, a reminder she was here. Alive. And that this stupid, fucking tent wall was all it took to feel how far apart we’d drifted.
I dragged a hand across my face, trying to smother the tight knot that lived behind my ribs. The boy’s lifeless body. The way she’d looked at me. All the ways we’d failed each other in a single day.
A low current stirred at the edge of my mind. Hoshiko.
I sat up, alert and ready for whatever came. “What’s wrong?”
“Etienne,” he said. “His dragon, Aelus, is worried. The night terrors have gotten bad, and his panic attacks are even worse. He’s scared Etienne might get hurt during one.”
I was already moving, pushing off the bed mat and stepping through the tent flap into the night.
I hurried to Finley, who lay curled on the ground, knees drawn to her chest. Moonlight shone against her features, and I took in the way her hair, much shorter now, fanned across her face and along the curve of her jaw.
Her fingers tightened against her other wrist. Her bare wrist.
My breath stammered out.
Her bracelet, the one she’d held on to after all these years, was gone. She did it. She finally let me go.
Heart aching, I knelt in front of her, slow so as not to startle her.
“Finley,” I whispered, her name cracking as it came out.
Her lashes fluttered, and for a beat she just blinked at me. Disoriented but still hollowed out. Then she flinched away.
My hands tightened into fists, but I kept my tone soft. “Etienne isn’t doing well.”
That was all it took. She was standing in less than half a beat. The torment etched across her face was momentarily forced aside by concern. She was breathtakingly fierce in the way she always threw herself between the world and someone else’s pain.
Hoshiko landed nearby, and we ran barefoot to him. He lowered himself to make our climb easier, his orange scales glistening beneath the moon’s light.
With Finley in front, she leaned against Hoshiko’s neck while I sat far enough back that we didn’t touch. The distance between us was a thin, unbearable line. Close enough to feel her warmth, too far to claim it.
My fingers twitched against my thigh, aching to reach for her. Just a whisper of contact. Something. Anything to convince me we hadn’t shattered completely.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I let the space between us swallow me whole.
We crossed through the tear in silence.
The moment Hoshiko touched the ground of her front yard, Finley jumped off his back and sprinted toward her home. My feet hit the ground a few beats after, my chest aching for far too many reasons.
Inside, the house was dark. It still carried the life she and Etienne brought to it, but it felt fractured somehow.
I followed Finley through a short hallway, her feet slapping against the wooden floor as she raced into a bedroom.
Etienne sat huddled in the corner, knees to his chest, fingers tangled in his hair as if he could hold himself together by force.
His breaths came in broken gasps, chest heaving around lungs that seemed to cave in on him.
As though something inside him had shattered and he was choking on the broken pieces.
His eyes were unfocused, glassy, and wild.
Finley didn’t hesitate. She sank to her knees so fast that the floor groaned at the impact.
“Etienne.” She breathed out his name, her voice trembling at the edges but steady at its core. She reached for him carefully, not touching him, but there.
He didn’t look at her. Didn’t look at anything. His nails dug into his scalp, and a strangled sound tore from him. Too quiet to be a scream, too broken to be a breath.
I froze at the doorway. My hands flexed uselessly at my sides with the urge to do something, anything, clawing at my chest. But panic like this didn’t bend to force. It needed something softer. Something Finley seemed to understand with the quiet way she tended to him.
Finley whispered his name again, and this time, her voice cracked from her love for him that spread through every syllable. It came out as a warm sound I hadn’t heard from her in what felt like forever.
Gods, how long would this day last?
I felt cheated somehow. First, her betrayal. Then watching . . . again, how she would forever love another male.
Was this how it would be for us? One event creating an incurable chasm?
“I get to choose. I get to choose how I live my life.
“All this time, I’ve been worried you’d regret binding your magic to our bond.” Her words had already begun shattering what was left of my battered heart, but then she uttered the final blow. “But it’s me who regrets it.”
How could we go forward from that?
I leaned against the doorframe, the weight pinning my shoulders. All I could do was be there. Steady and quiet and ready if she and Etienne needed me.