Chapter 24 #2
“The curse thinks I’m Kel’s bride,” Ryn burst out.
“But if I’m going to free him, I have to be good enough.
Worthy of standing by his side. What if the fact that I’m afraid of that future means I’m not actually worthy?
What if I fail because of my fear, and you and Kel are stuck in this nightmare forever because I was too selfish to make that sacrifice willingly? ”
No matter how much he might want to comfort her, Xavi had no reassuring answers to offer. He simply didn’t know.
“After all,” she continued, “I just admitted I don’t have a plan for the future.
I love what I do, but the world will not be worse off without it.
And as you said, I’m sure Kel is a truly good person who would never harm me.
Why should I not be content to serve such a noble purpose with my life? Why can I not simply choose this?”
For a moment, the only sound was the rippling of the waterfall and a fitful breeze that stirred the bare branches of the trees behind them.
“Ryn.”
Just as before, the sound of her name seemed to hold a peculiar sort of magic that compelled her to turn and look at him, eyes shimmering and lips trembling with feelings she was determined not to acknowledge.
And as he looked down at her, some instinct moved Xavi to reply not with a cavalier dismissal, nor with the sarcasm of Lesh, but with the same blunt honesty she employed.
If Kel could hear him now…
“A sacrifice forced is not a sacrifice at all, but a prison,” he told her coolly. “And if you truly believe that the world will not be worse off…”
The very idea was preposterous. In all his centuries, he had met no one with as much purity of purpose as Ryn.
It was evident in the way her eyes lit up when she made a new discovery, the way she pursued every question with unstoppable enthusiasm, and the way she charged fearlessly into the unknown for the sake of truth.
But perhaps that was the secret. It was the truth that made her fearless—her love for it and her pursuit of it, and here in his world of magic and curses and vengeful fae trials, there was very little certainty to be had.
What truth was there to pursue when one could not even trust the evidence of their own eyes?
He wanted to say more. To explain how very wrong she was, but she was caught in the thorny brambles of her fear and forged ahead before he could speak.
“If anyone would know about unwilling sacrifice, it’s you,” she said.
“So tell me, Xavi… How have you survived it all these years? Because you didn’t choose this either.
Not at first. How did you come to terms with your prison?
And how do you not hate me? What if my unwillingness to accept a relatively kind fate is what condemns you to remain in this same prison forever? ”
Her final question caught him entirely off guard. Why was he so untroubled by her insistence on not being Kel’s true bride? Why did he not hate her?
Momentarily taken aback, he stared at her pale, serious face, mentally tracing each freckle across her cheeks, noting the tendrils of hair that curled along her jaw and the upturned sweep of her nose.
Friend.
Across the span of centuries he had possessed only one friend, but now—like it or not—he had two.
And it did not matter to him what the curse decreed, nor what the trials intended.
Magic might be a force of nature, but it was not an unbreakable law, and he would not allow it to determine their future.
Not without fighting for a different way.
“If you do not wish to be Kel’s bride, then the curse cannot make you,” he heard himself say, with a sort of distant dismay at his own words. After everything he had done in service to Kel’s eventual freedom, was this truly the path he intended to take? To make it all meaningless?
Or was it possible that with this choice, he could give his life the first true meaning it had ever had?
“And I will not make you either.”
Ryn’s gasp was a small, quiet thing, but it seemed to shatter the final barrier standing between him and the emotion he’d once told Kel was the deadliest poison he could name.
Hope.
It was hope that shone back at him from Ryn’s bright, beautiful eyes. Hope that lightened the load he’d been carrying for so long that he’d forgotten it was not a natural part of himself.
Hope. Not a poison, but very possibly a drug. Because now that he’d experienced it for himself, he didn’t know if he could ever bring himself to let it go.
“You’re saying…” Ryn murmured.
“I’m saying we will find a way. We will pass these trials. We will defeat the fae. And when we reach the end, you will choose your own fate.”
No matter what he had to sacrifice to bring that future about.
In the privacy of his own heart, Xavi acknowledged that he was taking the coward’s way out.
Choosing to bypass those uncomfortable questions about what he would do if he lived.
Because that would mean reckoning with his past. Confronting his actions as Lesh and looking his failures squarely in the eye.
But if his sacrifice meant that Ryn would not be trapped?
Then he would choose it gladly, which meant it was neither a prison nor a curse.