Chapter 48 Meddling
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
MEDDLING
ADELINE
What’s happening? Another shake throws me to the floor. A crack appears in it, mere feet from me, and with a rumble, it widens, destroying the geometric pattern of the mosaics. Chunks break off the columns, crashing around us.
“Roane, get up,” I say, “we need to get out of here. Roane!”
He shakes his head where he’s kneeling, shoulders hunched. “No…” He seems lost inside his own head.
“It’s a quake, Roane! The ceiling could fall in.” Getting up, I place a hand on his shoulder. “Come.”
He jerks away, his gaze finally finding me, his voice a low hiss. “Druna and Tal left. You’re destroying my world.”
“Speaking the truth isn’t destruction. You can’t live inside a lie.”
“I was fine until you came!” Slowly, he regains his feet. “I was fucking fine.”
A lump is lodged in my throat. He’s right. I meddled. I needed to know more, but that doesn’t mean everyone does. Yet, weren’t Ardruna and Talton entitled to the truth?
“They love you,” I whisper. “They will come back.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know…” He pulls on his long, black hair. “I need them.”
I dare place my hand on his arm. “Roane—”
He grabs my wrist and twists until I’m off balance. His eyes flash. “What are you? You have more power over this world than anyone else. You’re not human.”
I yank my hand away but he doesn’t release it. “Let me go.”
He’s gazing at me, his eyes wild, a storm of emotions raging at their cores. “Aline—”
A flash of light and a golden form rises from the floor to stand chest to chest with Roane. “Don’t touch her!”
“Olm!” I whisper.
Roane still doesn’t release my wrist. “The book boy, are you? The one who keeps manipulating her?”
“Says the man who keeps lying to her,” Olm flings his accusation with such venom it takes me aback.
“Now she knows everything,” Roane says. “So fuck off, why don’t you, and leave us alone.”
“You wish,” Olm retorts. “Like it or not, I’m with her. You don’t get to make the rules and order us about—”
“I’m in charge of this godsdamn world!” Roane’s voice is uneven, his brow shiny with sweat, his cheeks red, his mouth tight. “Didn’t anyone tell you?”
With a sudden move, Olm shoves at him and Roane stumbles back a step. “But you’re not in charge of her!”
Roane blinks, abruptly releasing me. He presses a hand to his chest where Olm pushed him and sways on his feet.
A distant crash comes from the depths of the temple.
“Roane.” I grab his hand. “You need to rest.”
“Oh, great. Now you’re worried about him?” Olm demands, glowering.
“Something’s wrong.” But of course. Expending a lot of magic can kill you, everyone knows that. It’s not an infinite power. And Roane just brought two creatures back from the dead.
“Will you just blatantly ignore the way he’s treated his friends?” Olm shouts. “And you? And also me, by the way, dismissing me like—?”
I turn away from him. “Roane, you need to lie down. I’m going to find Ardruna and Talton.”
Roane grabs my forearm, grimacing. “No.”
“It’s not up to you.”
“I’ll be fine. They should… they should choose,” he says softly. “You were right.”
“But—”
His lashes are black lace against his pale cheeks. “I should have come clean. Told them about their origin. Where’s the value of having someone stay because of lies? It’s my fault.”
My eyes burn as I free my arm from his grip. “Stay here. I’ll find them.”
“I was just… lonely…” he breathes, head bowing low.
Hells.
My chest is so tight I can barely breathe as I sprint through the temple, and it has nothing to do with tiredness. Those last words he whispered, the anguish in his eyes when Ardruna and Talton walked away, the despair in his voice when he accused me of wrecking his world…
He has no business making me feel like this. This… sympathy. This connectedness. This need to protect him, the same way he protected me from monsters, the need to protect his heart, the same way you’d protect a child from any pain.
He’s a grown fae male, I remind myself, a seasoned warrior, an old being. He knows how life is. You don’t need to hold his hand. He messed up and his friends walked out. That’s on him, not you.
But logic doesn’t apply here anymore. I have feelings for him. His pain hurts me. I want to help him get back with his family.
A light sparks and I gasp as Olm appears, walking beside me.
“Don’t do that!” I hiss.
He frowns. “You don’t want to look at me? Do you think me ugly?”
“No, it’s not that. You startled me.”
“So you don’t think I’m ugly.” He smirks. “Good to know.”
Good Gods…
“Ardruna!” I yell. “Talton! Are you here?”
My voice echoes through the temple. A bird flutters high up and flies around a pillar. I hadn’t realized there were nests in here. Maybe it got trapped inside?
Or is it Talton?
“Talton!” I turn in a circle, trying to see the ceiling. It’s lost in darkness, the lamps hanging between the columns only serving to vaguely illuminate its shape and gild a few carved details here and there. “Ardruna!”
No reply. They have truly left.
Of course they have. When you find out that the person you trusted, the man you thought you knew, was hiding huge secrets from you, secrets about you, wouldn’t you take some time to think?
I come to a stop. It’s their right to stay away for a while. They will come back, right? I haven’t screwed this up completely? They are family. Ardruna said so.
Stop feeling guilty, I tell myself. He said it, too. Hiding the truth was a bad idea in the first place. You don’t build relationships on lies.
Yet, you could argue that stories are lies. All the myths and legends and fairytales I love so much are at least partly untrue. And this is a world made of tales.
Don’t confuse yourself, Aline. Ardruna and Talton may have originated in a book but their relationship with Roane is real and it obeys the same rules as any other.
Emotions warring inside me, I stomp back toward the nest. I want to be furious with him for hiding the truth not only from me, but from his friends.
But I’m mainly sad. I had wondered from the start what it must be like to live all alone.
He found a way to create a family for himself in a world full of monsters. How can I blame him for it?