Chapter 22
Tristan
My feet are like two lead anchors when I walk away from Nate’s door. But my heart is even heavier, and the contempt I saw in his black eyes is staining every bit of me.
I did that to him.
I left him.
We both know it.
He has to depend on me now, but that doesn’t mean he trusts me, and I fear he never will.
I wasted two months sulking and fantasizing about ways in which I would woo him and impress him while he remained locked in a dungeon.
Suffering. Hoping for my help. I’ve let him down, and the blooming affection I’ve clung to during his absence might never recover.
I walk down the winding stairs as if in a trance and the movement makes me dizzy with memories of the terrifying moment when I laid eyes on him in the dungeon.
It cuts my chest into ribbons to think I was playing with Lady, complaining about not getting the flavor of pie I wanted, or daydreaming about bedding him again while Nate was going through incomprehensible horrors.
And all that time, he thought I’d abandoned him.
Maybe I did. Should I have not enquired about him more sternly? Forced my way in sooner?
I struggle to breathe by the time I get back to the empty library.
The weight of guilt settles over my chest like a nightmare demon, and I have to sit down.
I slide down the nearest wall in a secluded part of the library.
The moon is rising, but it will be a while before courtiers start browsing the shelves, so I’m safe to wallow in self-pity I don’t deserve.
I fucked up. Again. I’m a fuck up. My title and the feats accomplished at tournaments mean nothing if I can’t protect the ones I care about.
And now Nate doesn’t even want to see me.
A sob tears out of my throat when I can’t stand it anymore. My mind is fixated on every second I spent with him, and every bad decision. How I bound his shadow to mine because I thought it was so obvious he’d want to be promised to me.
I thought it was romantic, maybe even noble to bind his shadow to mine so he would always have a place beside me. So he would never have to doubt where he belonged.
But instead of asking what he wants, I claimed him like he’s an uncharted island, not a person with a will of his own.
I press my palms into my eyes with a helpless sob. My chest aches as if something inside it is trying to claw its way out. I can't remember the last time I broke down like this.
What kind of knight does this? What kind of protector makes the person he swore to guard feel trapped?
Nate trusted me. Even after everything he endured, he trusted me enough to fall asleep in my arms at the tavern. To let me touch him. To believe me when I said I would help him.
But I didn’t do it fast enough.
As I sink into the dark well of memories, the smell of the dungeon hits me first. Rot, blood, damp stone.
Nate chained like some discarded animal in the corner of the cell.
My stomach twists violently as memories of his abused body flash through my mind.
His ribs so prominent under the skin. Bruises layered over bruises in sick shades of purple and yellow.
His lip split, his cheeks hollowed, his beautiful dark eyes sunken so deep in their sockets I barely recognized him.
The man I was dreaming about, the man whose laugh I fell for and whose mouth I tasted not so long ago—he was gone, replaced by this hollow, starved creature who looked up at me as if he wasn’t sure whether I was even real.
I remember the way his body felt when I lifted him. The grown man who should have been a solid weight in my arms felt like little more than bones wrapped in skin. His head lolled against my shoulder, and for one sickening heartbeat I thought I arrived in time to carry a corpse out of that place.
And all I could think was: I came too late.
Too late to stop it.
Too late to protect him.
Too late to deserve the way his fingers still clutched weakly at my armor.
My throat tightens again as another sob forces its way out. I press the heel of my hand to my mouth, trying to muffle it, but the sound escapes anyway, raw and humiliating in the quiet library.
Because while he starved in chains, wondering why I never came, I was eating pie.
It’s sickening.
I don’t deserve my soft bed and comfortable rooms. I don’t deserve the love of my family, nor a single smile from my beloved after I failed him so completely.
I’m a fraud.
I get the faintest rustle of warning before my sister’s voice disturbs the silence like a chime. “Tristan?”
I try to rub the tears away in panic, but I can’t seem to do that fast enough, and the sobs just keep coming.
“I’m… f-fine,” I utter even though I’m clearly the opposite of that.
A soft sigh, and then she comes closer, like she always would when I was still a child and she—a young lady.
But I’ve since grown out of the need for coddling.
I’m a grown man. A prince of the realm. A knight.
But when my sister sinks to the floor next to me and puts her arm around my shoulders, tears flow even harder, and I let her pull my head closer
“Oh, Tristan… what is causing this?”
Words pour out of me, because who else would I be able to tell any of this?
“H-he hates me, and I d-deserve it. I failed h-him. I got to the tower yesterday, and I found him all broken and hurt. Gloombane tortured him, Sabine. For two months. For two months he suffered so terribly, and I’m the one who left him there.
I assured him everything would be fine. I promised him. ”
Sabine’s quiet, and her silence feels like yet another accusation. I am a fraud. I am not worthy even of the cloak on my back, and I can’t blame Nate if he chooses to never speak to me again.
I wouldn’t have.
How foolish was it to hope he could forget all his suffering and move on to become my Dark Companion?
“It’s not your fault, Tristan,” Sabine tries, rubbing my shoulder with her soft hand. “You couldn’t have known. There was no reason to doubt Captain Gloombane’s character.”
Only there was. And I ignored it.
“After I pulled Nate out of the river, Gloombane saw Nate’s shadow and told me to throw him back in. I pressured him to—”
“Wait. What? You pulled out Nate?”
I stall, because it doesn’t seem to matter when it was Gloombane who bonded with Nate.
“Yes. It was a long night, I was helping. I always try to help, only for it to end up a disaster. And I did it again, Sabine. Gloombane’s dead, so I took a thread of Nate’s shadow and made him my promised, so no one could hurt him again.
But I didn’t ask. And now we’re stuck, and the bond is the last thing he wants after what he’s been through. ”
Sabine shakes her head and takes her arm away to rub at her face as she stares ahead, toward the sculpture of Lord Kyran’s mother.
“Then you did right a wrong. If you were the one to save him, he was never Captain Gloombane’s to begin with.
Destiny brought you together. He will yet come around,” she says in a soothing whisper.
I let out a trembling breath. “You don’t understand the depth of my mistakes. I promised him that if it’s his wish, I will find a way to break the shadow bond.”
She frowns, eyes whipping my way. “Tristan. You know that’s impossible.”
“I know! But I’d promise him anything. So I lied. Once more I promised what I can’t give. I’m fucking useless. I guess there is one way I could rid him of the bond. Gloombane’s proof that it works. At least I’d be true to my word.” I have to bite my cheek to keep in another sob.
I could do it even tonight. Just stand at the top of the highest tower in the castle and jump onto the rocks below. It’s low tide. I’d be gone before I could suffer any further, and Nate would be free to live out the rest of his life as a free man.
I could give that to him. The ultimate proof of my commitment.
Save both him and my honor in one swoop.
“Tristan, don’t you even think about that,” Sabine hisses, and she pulls my face toward her, fingers digging into my jaw. Her brows are pinched, face even paler than usual. “You know very well it would just leave him open to more abuse.”
She’s right. I’m such a fool. I can’t die until he’s back in the human realm, where there are no elves to claim him.
But as I start building a plan to whisk him away as soon as he’s feeling more like himself, my sister shakes her head.
“You’re as easy to read as when you were a boy, and the answer is no!
I won’t let you do something so unimaginably daft!
Just look at this library,” she says, gesturing at the rows of books.
“There must be a better answer on one of the shelves.”
I take a deep breath and manage to fill my lungs this time.
I’ve never liked reading much, but I’d do it for Nate.
I’d spend the rest of my life reading, if that’s what it takes.
“He read this… We spent the night at Unicorn’s Rest, and we got this idea, based on the tavern’s history, that maybe a unicorn could break the bond. ”
Sabine cocks her head at me with a serious expression, and I can almost see the cogs turning in her head.
“I’ve never heard of that being done, but that’s not even so outlandish.
Its horn is supposed to be the sharpest thing in existence, and if it can cut something as abstract as a blood oath, why not a shadow bond?
It’s worth investigating. I could ask Lord Kyran—”
“He can’t know!”
“Right.” She hums. I don’t think I even need to explain why.
“But it’s not a bad idea, Tristan. I’ll help you research it, and we could even engage others under a different pretense.
And in the meanwhile, Nate will heal, you two will talk, and who knows where you will stand on this matter in a month. ”
I sigh deeply and nod. Now that she’s so fired up, it’s not even worth mentioning that Nate doesn’t want to see me.
Sabine wraps her arms around my neck tightly, and it does help to have her on my side. She’s the smartest person I know.
“We will work it out, Tristan, so no more stupid ideas,” she whispers, and my defences once more break as I sob into her hair.