18. Chapter 18
Lunette
My lungs still worked. My heart beat. But the faint, foolish hope I’d preserved in the back of my mind, barely acknowledged and never spoken, had snapped cleanly in two.
Benevolent gods, please help me get through this without crying.
I’d known he was someone far above me. That he wasn’t truly Rowan. But the true distance between us was so wide I couldn’t see the other side of the chasm.
The man before me wore Rowan’s face. The same eyes that had looked at me like I meant something.
Those were even the same lips that had kissed me—something my body wouldn’t let me forget.
But this wasn’t the wounded stranger who’d trusted me with his pain, who’d set himself free in my arms and convinced me that falling apart together would be worth the risk to my heart.
The hints had been there about who he was underneath the warmth he radiated so freely. His ramrod-straight back during dinner, the armor, his icy countenance during our disagreement, his way of speaking.
Now Owain, Prince of Larethia, stood where my patient had been. And I was still a simple mountain healer, living on bartered food, wearing patched clothing.
I pulled my shawl tighter around myself as if wool could shield me from banners and armor and the expectations of an entire kingdom standing at my doorstep. I still felt exposed. Measured. Like I was a secret dragged into daylight, already halfway to becoming a liability.
Owain’s eyes found mine again and softened.
The traitorous part of my heart lifted when his expression shifted into the naked vulnerability that reminded me of waking up next to him.
Then he’d been surprised to see me. Now, the control was back in place, and it was as though he were bracing for my reaction.
I didn’t know what to think. That uncertainty rooted me in place, even as part of me rebelled against not being at his side.
He stopped an arm’s length away. Close enough that I could feel his warmth, reach out if I wanted to.
Up close, the transformation was sharper. He held himself as though Larethia would fall apart if he relaxed his shoulders or loosened his jaw a fraction. And he limped—only slightly, but I saw it. Seeing him hide his pain sparked my healer’s drive to close the gap between us and help.
But now that I knew, I couldn’t. There were strict boundaries between royalty and the rest of us.
Owain’s hands lifted, just a fraction. They trembled. For a foolish, aching moment, I thought he might reach for me.
But his hands fell.
The restraint stung more than the deception because now it felt like a choice.
“Can we speak inside?” he asked quietly.
So close to Rowan’s voice. But not quite the soft cadence I’d grown used to. This was Owain’s voice—measured, controlled, constructed for command even when he was asking for something.
Behind him, warhorses shifted and snorted. Leather creaked and torches flashed to life with the waning sun. Rows of armed men from two kingdoms watched us with open curiosity. His world was pressing into mine, taking it over.
So many eyes on me made me want to run, so I nodded.
I started walking before I could change my mind. Each step toward the cabin felt strangely exposed. I was aware of everything—the sway of my skirts, my rapid breathing, the fact that my home had no true defenses against the outside world.
Just like I had no defenses against him.
The shattered front door hung open on broken hinges. But that was a problem for later. I stepped inside and moved aside so he could follow.
The space felt smaller, like the walls were closing in and the air growing tighter, the instant a prince entered my world.
Some self-protective instinct within me reached for cruelty before grief could get there first. I turned to face him and dipped into a curtsy that was shallow enough to insult, quick and mocking enough to wound. He’d already had one foot out the door; now I knew he could never have been mine.
“Your Highness,” I said, honey-sweet.
For one fierce, petty second, it was worth it. Then he flinched, and the satisfaction curdled. It was low of me, but I’d wanted it to hurt, for him to feel even a fraction of what I did.
Hairline cracks formed across the careful mask he’d worn outside. Owain dragged a hand through his dark brown hair, frustration written plain across his face. “I’m sorry I lied to you, Lunette,” he said. “But let’s be honest—you knew I wasn’t Rowan.”
I made a low sound in my throat and crossed the room, collapsing onto the edge of my bed. The familiar sag of the mattress steadied me more than I liked to admit.
“Yes,” I said after a moment. “I did.” I looked up at him, letting the truth rest between us. “But that doesn’t make it any easier, Owain.”
His true name hit him like a verbal punch to the gut. He opened his mouth then closed it. A grimace twisted his expression. “I’m sorry,” he said again, quieter this time, as if repetition might make a difference.
His fingers flexed and stilled at his sides, restless. He shifted on his feet. Shadows formed near his boots, tendrils of darkness emerging and retreating from him as if testing the air. I’d watched those shadows for days, categorized their moods the way I catalogued symptoms. That was anxiety.
“Luna, I—”
The abbreviated name triggered a sudden, sharp pang in my chest. Unwilling to yield to the emotions welling in me, to the confusion, I looked away, teeth clenched so hard it hurt because I didn’t want to cry.
All I wanted to do was turn back time and start this all over again.
He shifted, and a flash of pain crossed his face, agitated shadows rising to the surface of his skin before he locked both down. Finally, he said, “I have to go with them.”
We were already over before we’d truly begun.
“I know,” I replied, my voice clipped. “You said that while you were still Rowan.”
His slow exhalation carried the weight of an exhausted man bracing himself to step into another battle. Then, very softly, as if afraid of how I’d react, he said, “Come with me.”
The suggestion hung in the silence between us, charging the air with terrifying impossibility.
I stared at him, at the prince standing in my broken doorway, with restless shadows creeping up his neck, asking me to cross a distance I’d only just learned to measure. Before he could stop them, the black lines spread across the back of his hands then disappeared as he clenched his fists.
He looked caged by his own skin. And for the first time since his horse had stumbled into my clearing, I didn’t know which of us was more afraid. I wanted to help. Wanted to comfort him.
The urge to say yes rose within me like a blizzard coming off the mountains. He was offering me a life away from Selmont. Where I could be someone new. Where I wasn’t alone.
I actually opened my mouth to answer. Then closed it. The word yes had been right there, but my throat closed around the confirmation I wanted to give him so badly.
For one humiliating heartbeat, I could only stare at him from my spot on the bed. I thought—we had both thought, surely—that this was only going to be a single, stolen night. It would end come morning, and my life would return to exactly as it had been before he showed up.
“Come with you?” I asked, my voice wavering only slightly. Visions of spending another night with him—one beneath the stars as we traveled away from this awful village, of having another quiet dinner with him, of actually enjoying this thing we’d only just started—filled my mind.
But those dreams were too dazzling, too perfect to be real for a woman like me. I’d learned, young and hard, that bright things drew attention. And attention in the borderlands meant danger.
Something like worry wiped the rest of Owain’s careful control from his expression, leaving him bare and unguarded.
“So,” I said, filling the space before it swallowed me whole, “you expect me to trail after you as a kept secret?” The last word tasted like dried blood, but I had to get it out. “Because I assure you, that is not my life goal, my prince.”
His eyes widened in shock. “Is this because I asked you to come inside? Lunette, I didn’t want to put pressure on you if you didn’t feel the way I do.” A sense of urgency propelled him forward, his limp momentarily forgotten as he moved.
Careful to leave a polite distance, he sat down on the edge of the bed beside me, the rushes of the mattress giving slightly to his heavier weight. He held his hands so rigidly on his thighs his knuckles were white, as if holding them there was the only thing keeping him from reaching out.
I wished he would…
“Never a secret,” he said, though he sounded less sure of that than I would’ve liked—or maybe that was my own fear painting his words.
A tremor shot through me at his proximity, at the quiet promise of what could be brushing against my skin.
He exhaled a gust, turned to me, and then reached out. With heartbreaking gentleness, he touched my shoulder then slid his hand down my arm. I began to lean toward him but caught myself before I fell under his spell yet again.
“Leave Selmont,” he urged, finally resting his hand atop mine. My heart broke a little more with each drag of his thumb. “You’ll be safe. You deserve more than this village gives you. More than they let you be. The Tir needs healers like you—people like you.”
Everything he said snagged on my deepest desires.
His gaze flicked briefly to my horribly patched roof, to the shattered door. “You wouldn’t have to barter for food anymore. You wouldn’t have to put up with Elbort to get your roof patched!”
So, he’d noticed my worry about that too. He saw too much, too deep.
My breath hitched, and a surprised, half-delirious laugh burst out of me. “I’m the only person keeping this village from burning to the ground.”
“Lunette.” His fingers found mine, curling around them. “You don’t owe them your entire life.”
“This is what I’m meant for.” My eyes burned.
One hand rose to cup my cheek—firmer this time. He gently tilted my chin upward, forcing me to meet his gaze again.
“No, you’re meant for whatever you choose,” he said, voice low and fierce, like he couldn’t stand the thought of me believing anything less. “Your kindness, generosity. Your quiet strength. Your mind. Gods, your magic, all of it makes a woman who deserves to be somewhere she’s honored.”
I shut my eyes, fighting the lump in my throat. If I opened them, I’d say yes. I knew that down to my bones. And if I did…
The wards would fall.
The village would be vulnerable.
The children would die. Louie, with his gap-toothed grin and adorable snorting laugh. Little Celine with her fresh scar.
Crimson splatter. All I could imagine would end in red.
And my usefulness—my purpose, my family’s legacy—would crumble.
Owain’s gaze met mine as I slowly opened my eyes. I could tell by his expression that he’d meant every single word. That made what I said next all the harder. “Somehow, your men got through my wards, which means I’m going to have to patch them up.”
His face twisted with a mixture of pain, understanding, and anger, each emotion fighting for dominance. “One woman shouldn’t have to keep an entire village alive.” He shifted beside me, unease written in every rigid line of his body as his hand dropped back to my arm.
“I could spare forces,” he said carefully. “Your cabin could serve as the initial base for a garrison. We can expand forces once the ice thaws.”
I barely kept my voice down. “Now you want to do something about the raids in the borderlands?”
“Stopping them is exactly what brought me to your doorstep,” he said quickly, hands lifting as if to placate me.
His earnestness doused most of my fire, beating back my anger into a quiet ache. I sank lower onto the bed, slower this time, trying to fit the pieces together. “You were heading off to fight,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
He shook his head, eyes fixed on the floor, the wall—anything but me. “No. I was traveling to forge an alliance with Gelida.”
Instead of the understanding I’d hoped for, confusion swiftly set in. “So you want me to go with you to Gelida first?”
“No,” he said. “I’m not traveling there anymore. Not for months. Hopefully never.” He paused. “Nisien is going in my place.”
I frowned. “How,” I asked slowly, “can the prince of Darreth broker a deal for Larethia?”
With a sigh, Owain looked up, lines of defeat etched into his features. “It was to be a possible marriage alliance.”
Something inside me snapped. He’d come to me first. He was mine before some other woman could claim him.
Ridiculous, Luna. Fate didn’t bring him to your door, bloody politics did.
I was shrugging off his hands, on my feet, before I realized I’d moved, the motion abrupt enough that he startled. My heart pounded in my ears. “So you were just about to bed me,” I said, each word as sharp as glass, “even though you were engaged?”
“Not—” He broke off, his jaw muscles visibly tensing. “Not engaged. Just…meant to evaluate. See if we would fit.” His voice had almost evaporated by the last word.
I paced, a prisoner of the storm of emotion that ravaged me. My gaze lifted to him, and the weight of my resolve settled into a dull ache in my chest.
“No,” I said finally. “You can’t leave men here.”
He stiffened. “Lunette—”
“This village survives because no one notices it,” I said. “It doesn’t belong to kings or princes or their wars.” My hands curled into fists at my sides. “If you surround it with steel, it will burn. If not by the raiders’ fire, then by our neighbors’ hatred.”
My wards protected a place that no longer existed in most minds. If Selmont became a place worth guarding, it would become a place worth taking.
The silence between us felt like a suffocating blanket. A strange calm settled over me as I realized that desire wouldn’t be deciding our fate. Our futures hinged on the sacrifices we were prepared to make.
Something told me that the next person to speak would be making a choice that couldn’t be undone. The shadows that had been nervously tapping by his feet were waiting, those on his wrists and neck utterly still.
And I already knew my answer. My hands had gone very still in my lap. I hadn’t noticed until now that they’d been reaching for him. “I can’t go with you, Owain.”
The distance between us yawned open again. And even though I hated every agonizing twitch of my muscles, I stepped back from the edge of the chasm.