Chapter 28 #2
The silence that follows is thick and heavy. He looks away first, and for a second I think he might be angry—until I realize it’s an entirely different emotion. Not fury. Not hurt. Just the slow dawning of truth. The ache of knowing he was never really in the running.
Darian’s gaze drops. “You’re making a mistake.”
“I’ve made worse ones.”
Darian’s jaw tightens. “You want a storybook ending. A broken hero chasing his perfect princess. But this isn’t a love story.”
“No,” I say. “It’s not.”
He waits. “Then why go?”
“Because I want to be the one who chooses.”
He flinches at that. Not visibly—but I feel it.
I wrap my arms around myself. Not for warmth. Just to hold all the pieces in. The fire is too bright now. Too close. And his voice sounds far away, like something echoing down a corridor I’ve already left behind.
He tries one last time. “You’re not just choosing Mallen. You’re choosing your father. You’re giving him what he wants. Power, through you.”
The words land hard. My throat tightens.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “My father wins no matter what I do. He’s already found ways to take it back. Whether I choose Mallen or not. I have to face him, Darian. That’s the only way this ends.”
“You truly believe that?”
I nod slowly. “I do.”
There’s something in the stillness that follows.
The way Darian looks at me—not with anger, but with resignation.
He looks like a man who has taken me from the darkness of the capital to the edge of this kingdom and knows he hasn’t found the light.
Like he already knows what I’m going to say.
Like he knew it would end this way, but hoped it wouldn’t.
He moves toward me. Not with force. Not even with hope.
With sorrow.
“I could’ve made you happy,” he says.
“I wouldn’t have done the same for you.”
Another silence stretches long between us.
Darian moves first. He steps back, slowly, like his body hasn’t quite agreed with the decision yet. The firelight carves harsh lines across his face—cheekbones too sharp, mouth tight with restraint. For all his poise, I can feel the fracture.
Not anger. Not rejection.
Regret.
“You should sleep,” he says. “It’s been a long day.”
I straighten. “My decision won’t change after a good night’s sleep. I’m going back to Threnos.”
His expression doesn’t change, but the tension in his jaw deepens. “You can’t leave on foot. Not when it’s this far.”
“I’ll take one of the horses.”
“My men will ask questions.”
“I’ll make something up.”
He shakes his head. “They’ll talk. About me. About you. They’ll think—”
“That you lost.”
He tenses. “They’ll certainly find it unusual.”
He’s built his entire identity on being clever, being clean. The one who sees three moves ahead. The one who always walks away untouched.
And now he won’t.
“I didn’t lie to you,” he says suddenly. “About the escape. About the house. About the others—”
“But you lied about something else.” I meet his gaze, steady.
His silence is answer enough.
I watch the lie unravel in his eyes. A flash of calculation and then guilt. Not the hot, brash kind. The slow, creeping kind that eats through the spine. The kind that costs someone to admit it.
“About Mallen.”
Of course he did.
He wanted to win.
“I told you that the labyrinth revealed what he truly was,” he says. “That the darkness you saw would consume him.”
I nod.
“I wanted you to believe it. Because it made it easier for you to leave him. To walk away. I thought it would hurt you less.”
He looks down at the floorboards.
I almost ask him if that’s true—if he really thought it would hurt less. But the look in his eyes tells me he’s convinced himself it is. And maybe that’s enough. Maybe I don’t need to unmake every lie just to prove he meant it.
“I needed you to be afraid of him,” he says at last. “Because if you weren’t—if you knew he wasn’t the monster—then nothing I offered would’ve mattered.”
“And now?”
He lifts his eyes. “Now I think the gods are watching. I know that they want you to make this choice. Clearly. With the truth laid bare. And I will anger them if I do not respect your decision.”
The answer hits colder than it should.
I almost laugh, but it turns bitter in my throat. “You’re telling me the truth now not because you want to, but because you’re afraid of what might happen if you don’t.”
He doesn’t argue. Gods, it’s worse than if he had.
“And what is the truth, Darian?”
“He’s not all darkness. Not completely. He can control it.”
I swallow. “If I give him a reason to.”
Darian’s blue eyes burn with reluctant hope, bright and brittle like frost on steel. “Yes.”
I study him for a long time. The man who offered me a way out, who stood beside me when I didn’t know which way to run.
Who said all the right things and still couldn’t see that they weren’t the things I needed.
I don’t hate him. I never will. But I don’t trust him either.
Not the way I need to trust the person I walk into fire for.
“You’re not a villain, Darian,” I say softly. “You’re not innocent either.”
He nods once. Slow. “And him?”
“He’s not innocent. But he never lied about it.”
I watch his shoulders sink with the weight of what could have been. The fire behind us crackles and fades, burning lower.
The moment hangs between us, full of endings that won’t be said aloud. The flames have burned down to embers now, small, red, and restless. I rise slowly, as if the weight of the truth has finally settled on my shoulders. There’s only one thing left to do.
“I need something from you,” I say at last.
His eyes flick to mine. “What is it?”
“Not a favor. A vow.”
He straightens. “You ask a lot, Princess.”
“I need your silence. You’ll tell no one what Mallen became in the maze. Not your men, not the Temple, not the Crown. Not even as a whisper.”
He hesitates.
I hold his gaze. “You said the gods are watching. So swear it.”
“I don’t lie under vow,” he says quietly.
“Then don’t make one you can’t keep.”
He closes his eyes for a moment, as if listening to some voice far away. Then he says, clear and even: “I swear on the Sundered Flame and the blood that binds it. I will keep his secret.”
I breathe out. The tightness in my chest begins to ease, but only just.
“You’ll need to tell your men something,” I say. “They’ll want a reason why you left without me.”
He nods once. “It has to look like my choice.”
“They already assume you’ve claimed me. Let them believe it. Let them think you brought me here to seduce me, and once you had what you wanted, you left.”
His mouth tightens. “You’d let them believe that about you?”
I lift a brow. “They already do. Why not use it?”
He doesn’t answer right away.
“I’m giving you a story,” I say. “One your men will believe. One that keeps your pride intact. And in return, you give me what I want.”
He hesitates. “This seems an unfair bargain.”
“Perhaps,” I say. “But it’s true.”
He nods once, sharply. Agreement, but not acceptance.
“You’ll sleep on the chaise and leave before dawn,” I say. “Take your men. They’ll think you abandoned me.”
He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t offer to help. Doesn’t beg me to stay. He just watches as I move past him, heading for the door. If the gods weren’t holding him, would he choose differently?
His voice comes out soft and hoarse. “You’ll go to him?”
“Yes.”
“You think he’ll forgive you?”
“I don’t need forgiveness.”
“You think it’s love, what you’re choosing?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “It’s the only thing that still feels real.”
He nods again. A final, quiet surrender.
“I never meant to hurt you,” he says.
I pause in the doorway. “You didn’t.”
I look back at him.
“You just didn’t help me the way I needed.”
And then I leave.