Chapter 15 #2
Tears welled in her eyes. “You idiot,” she hissed.
“You already had my heart. I loved you. So gods damn much I defied the Elders just so I could train with you. I waited for you to do something, say anything that let me know you felt what I felt. But you never did. I even—” Her voice cracked.
She shook her head, trying to clear the emotion that was leaking out in salt and breath.
“I even let you live that night because my heart was still too weak to kill you.”
Their confessions collided. Splintered. Fell to the cavern floor amongst the icicles.
“You loved me?” he asked. The shattered things of what could have been pierced his soft question.
She lifted her chin. “I did, Kedar. You were everything to me, too.”
“And now…”
Her heart was beating too fast. Her vision narrowed.
“I can’t. We can’t.” Her fist curled against her chest. “There’s this thing inside of me, clawing to get out, that loves you still and will go on loving you.
Even in death. But I also hate you so much that it has changed and shaped me.
I hate you for the choices you made that night, for being exiled because of you. And gods, I hate myself, too.”
He closed the distance between them, and she was too shocked to anticipate what he would do. But she could never have prepared herself for the sight of him falling to a knee before her. He planted his fist hard into the cavern floor as he bowed his head.
“What—”
“I’ll do anything,” he said through gritted teeth. “Complete any task, slay any beast. Ask it of me, Vessa, and it is yours. You want me to crawl to you? Beg? You only need command it. I’ll spend a lifetime earning your forgiveness and trust, just do not make me suffer a life without you near.”
Could it be so easy? She imagined having him again.
They could hunt and train together. Return to Lovo, where he’d given her the plasma dirk, and travel to all the planets they once spoke about.
They could laugh under the stars again, trade all their secrets.
She could see him every day with his mask off.
Collect each of his expressions and hold them close like a treasure keeper.
She could just be with him. Her best friend.
Tears ran down her cheeks. “You’ll do anything I want?” she whispered.
He looked up at her then, and she almost came undone. “Anything.” He brought his hands up to grip the sides of her thighs. “Please.”
Her heart shattered. Her very soul cracked. She was so gods damn tired of losing everything. “Then let me go, Kedar.”
He closed his eyes. “This is what you ask of me?” His voice was hoarse, broken.
“It’s better this way,” she whispered.
He rose with frenetic energy. “Anything but that. I’ll never stop hunting you, Vessa. I can’t. You are in every wretched breath I take. I don’t know how to be in this world without you. ”
“Maybe we’ll find each other in another lifetime. And maybe then, things will be different for us—we could be each other’s salvation. But right now, you need to let me go.”
“You’ll have to rip out my hearts to stop me from following you.” He clawed at the middle of his chest as if he could give them to her right then. “Take them, they’re yours!”
This was pain beyond anything else she had ever suffered.
But Vessa took her fill of him. Memorized the structure of his face, the exact hue of his eyes.
Then she stepped around him, retrieved his helmet.
Kedar only watched her, his breathing ragged.
He was shaking and his skin was hot, feverish, as she pressed against him.
Standing on her tiptoes, she cupped her hand at the nape of his neck and pulled him down.
He obeyed, searching her gaze. Too afraid to undo whatever it was she was offering. Desperate for anything she would give.
He let her fit the helmet over his head, just as he had allowed her to take it off hours ago. She brought it down until only his mouth was exposed to her.
Then she kissed him hard. His mouth moved against hers hesitantly, but mostly he let her take. Swiping her tongue through his parted lips, she allowed herself to taste him. To know him in this way. He tasted like every hope she’d ever had.
And every bitter regret.
“Vessa,” he groaned.
“I’m so sorry,” she breathed against his mouth.
The maglock cuff locked around his wrist.
Kedar grabbed for her, but she was already stepping out of his reach, and his fingertips merely brushed over her suit.
He was jerked backward toward the rear of the cavern, where she had fit the other cuff into its icy wall.
Out of sight. It’d been easy to do with the fire-hold gel while he was hunting.
He fought against the powerful pull, every muscle straining—a god withstanding the force of a thousand suns.
He took an impossible step forward. And then another.
But even he, the strongest Xaal she’d ever met, couldn’t win against the pull of the magnets.
He roared her name as he lost the battle, his boots scraping over stone as the force dragged him into the shadows.
The metallic thunk of the cuff meeting the thick ice echoed through the cavern.
In the dark, his visor blazed crimson. She could hear him panting.
Could feel the betrayal between them like a tether, pulling on her bones. On her very soul.
“I’ll amplify the signal and release you when I fly overhead,” she said, her voice cracking.
“I’ll never stop, Vessa,” he growled. “This is what I’ve become.”
Swiping hot tears away and sniffing, she forced herself to focus.
She emptied the pack he’d brought and filled it only with the stuff she would be taking with her.
Two stasis boxes with meat, two hydration packs, and the warming blanket.
Then she collected her weaponry. Her sword and hair pin were still stained with his blood, but she couldn’t waste the time it would take to clean them.
When her hand wrapped around the plasma dirk he had gifted her, she knew, even after everything, she couldn’t leave it behind.
On the threshold of the cavern, she looked out into the harsh winter world beyond. It upset her that there were no wild winds or lightning storms now. The world should be in chaos with her, but instead, it was all sparkling snow and towers of ice and stone.
It would all be over the moment she left. She’d survived for seven years alone. This changed nothing. It couldn’t.
“Goodbye, Kedar.”
He punched the ice hard, and she winced. “Don’t do this.”
His voice was so raw, so full of a pain that spoke to her own, she almost turned around. Almost went to him.
Instead, she put her shoulders back and stepped out.