19. Chapter 19
Owain
My body reacted to Lunette’s rejection by opening a void in my chest that stole the air from my lungs. Cold dread invaded the space left behind, creeping into every limb. Even the edges of my perception dimmed, just as they had when I’d teetered on the brink of death.
My body was already mourning something my mind hadn’t yet accepted was lost.
But then I saw the way her face was etched with pain, her eyes clouded with hurt. And a restless feeling grew inside, pushing me. I had to try. I had to make her see why she should come with me.
Princes of Larethia kneeled to their king and queen and no one else. My body knew that in the way it knew how to breathe. Every instinct bred into me since boyhood resisted. But my knees hit the floor anyway, and I found I didn’t care at all.
Pride was a small thing to sacrifice. I’d have given considerably more. I was just beginning to understand how much.
“Please,” I said again, softer, the word slipping out of me in prayer. “Reconsider.”
Lunette’s gaze was fixed somewhere past my shoulder, on the cracked doorframe, on Muffin’s fallen perch crashed to the floor—on anything but my face. Her expression had gone very still, in the way a deer did just before bolting.
Still on my knees, I listed the benefits. “You wouldn’t be hidden. You wouldn’t be a secret. You would have a place of your own, protection, resources—”
Her lips pressed into a thin line. Her voice was calm. Too calm. “If your court decides I’m too different, then what?”
“That won’t happen,” I said firmly. Who could think she was anything but wonderful?
A red curl fell across her brow as her eyes narrowed. “You may be a prince, Owain, but you can’t promise that.”
Fuck. I was so enamored with her I wasn’t actually thinking.
She was right. I couldn’t. Not when half of them already thought the same to me. I faltered, but only for a heartbeat. “I can promise that I won’t change my mind about you.”
Somehow, I knew that down to the marrow of my bones. I would never get over this woman.
She still didn’t seem convinced of my sincerity.
“Gods know Nisien is charming,” I added, more carefully. I let out a faint huff, the sound carrying the weight of my many shortcomings in comparison. “If anyone can persuade a reluctant princess to wed, it’s him.”
I hoped that was true more than I’d ever hoped for anything.
Luna’s body tensed. The exact opposite of what I had hoped for.
I was already fucking this up. I took a chance and leaned my forehead lightly against her soft belly.
When she closed her arms around me, it felt like everything might be okay.
The rise and fall of her breath, her fingers threading through my hair, were a calming force like nothing else as I sought the perfect words to change her mind.
“I’m telling you there is a chance for us,” I said into her skirts, the raw words tumbling off my tongue before I could temper them, before I could protect myself.
“I’ve done everything that’s ever been asked of me, Lunette.
Everything. Even when it cost me pieces of myself, I did it.
” My voice dropped. “You are the first thing I’ve ever asked for. ”
The gentle movement of her fingers through my hair ceased for a fleeting moment. That abrupt silence felt like a definitive conclusion. I swallowed through an aching throat. It was like my body was trying to tell me I’d already said too much and not enough all at once.
She let out a long breath as I stood, trying to make myself smaller. Maybe if I didn’t dwarf her now, she might overlook our other differences and see how good we could be.
For one fragile moment, I thought I had her. I saw the pull, the raw pain that mirrored mine perfectly. It was agonizing to witness, yet it ignited a spark of hope in me where there was only dimness before.
Her eyes, shining with an unknown emotion, finally met mine. I stopped breathing. Hoping, waiting.
“I can’t, Owain.”
Everything fell still.
When my heart started beating again, I said hoarsely, “You’re asking me to abandon you before we’ve even had the chance to try.”
She said nothing. And a terrible suspicion, dark and unwelcome, crept over me. “Was I nothing more than a night’s diversion?” The question tasted like bile as it left my mouth, bitter and unworthy of both of us. I hated myself for asking it.
She looked away, but said softly, “I thought that’s all I was to you. I can’t go because I know what happens when I give people the power to cast me out.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. The arguments I’d rehearsed on the walk back inside—promises, contingencies, carefully structured compromises—fell apart under the weight of her devastating certainty.
“I wouldn’t,” I said fiercely, still begging even if I wasn’t kneeling.
“But you could,” she replied. “We’re from different worlds, Owain.”
The worst part was that I had no answer because she wasn’t wrong about that either. My world was edged with steel just like hers, but where I came from, the attacks came from within. It would ask her to bleed one way or another.
The fracture that had started earlier spread through my chest. It was deep, as if my shadows had formed a jagged blade and were pressing outward from the place just behind my sternum, wedging the bones apart slowly and without mercy. Tearing me asunder.
“You’re choosing solitude over possibility,” I argued, and immediately hated myself for how it sounded. I knew it wasn’t fair, but I’d thought there was a possibility she’d wanted the same thing.
“No. I’m choosing to continue my mother’s legacy. To save my village while you and everyone like you,” she pointed toward the door, “dawdle on a solution.”
I had no worthy answer to that because she was right. We were failing our people.
Still, something within me strained against its limits, reaching for her, for the impossible shape of a life I’d never allowed myself to imagine until she put it within reach.
I knew we could have what we shared in her little cabin in the Tir.
She could continue her work helping people during the day, dine with me as the sun set, and sleep beside me every night.
We could find happiness with each other.
But now, mercifully or cruelly, she was taking away that possibility. And it was entirely my fault.
I stood there and let myself want her for one more moment. Then, from a bleak and merciless place inside, unforgivable thoughts bubbled up.
What good is power if you never use it? Take her. She’d be safer.
The orders were already forming on my lips before I understood what I was doing. The horror of that realization snapped me back into myself.
Breathe, Owain. You’re not the monster they paint you. Don’t be him now. Never to her.
I was Nocthel. She’d taught me that.
I had to be better than my base impulses. If I stayed here looking at her—if I kept pushing—I would approach the point of no return. I’d do something I could never forgive myself for.
So I did what I’d been trained to do since childhood.
I built the walls back up around myself, stone by stone, forcing my breath to steady, my shoulders to square.
I thought of the men outside waiting for my command.
Of my best friend and Reina. Of maps and borders and decisions soaked in blood.
Of the weight I’d been trained to carry since boyhood.
I clasped my hands behind my back, locking them behind a prison of flesh.
It was all that stopped me from reaching out for her again.
I let the Shadowborn prince rise up and smother Owain.
My shadows fought back tooth and nail under my skin, but my will was stronger.
I pushed them down into the place where I kept my emotions buried under discipline.
A Fae-blooded healer with the power to rebuild bone and flesh from ruin would be worth more to the Assembly than a dozen battlemages.
They hadn’t cared what anyone—especially not women—had wanted for centuries.
They would take her, call it prudence, and force her to bear child after child until her body gave out.
I knew it because they’d tried to force Isca into a similar situation.
She’d told me, discreetly, how the Assembly had sent her to Tir Darreth under the guise of diplomacy, but in reality all they’d wanted from her was a womb occupied with the child of the human weapon they’d lost control of so they could create another one.
Maybe it was best that Lunette remain a secret in Selmont.
“I understand,” I said finally. “My troops will be ready to leave within the hour. King Emrys will charge the ward he broke.”
Lunette’s shoulders sagged, like she was relieved in too many ways to count. Then, her expression cleared as she made up her mind. “Wait,” she said, turning away.
Hope—ridiculous and unrealistic—leaped in my chest. I’d spent a lifetime keeping it contained, and she’d undone all of that in little more than a week without even trying.
With quick, purposeful strides, she crossed the room and kneeled before one of her wooden trunks. The lid creaked in the chilly silence of the room as she pushed it open. I waited for what felt like an eternity, sternum aching but still filled with impossible dreams.
When she turned back, she was carrying my dagger in one hand and the Fae children’s book in the other, its yellowed pages crackling softly as it shifted in her arms.
She held them both out to me. “You need it right now more than I do…”
She was giving me a family heirloom?
No…considering the steel in her eyes, she was giving me a clean ending. The kindness in that felt far crueler than simply being told to get out. Fuck.
She’d given me a truth sharp enough to slice me open, tearing out my identity along with my heart. But the realization that I hadn’t earned her presence was the real jagged edge. Even so, I accepted both from her hands with thanks.
I inclined my head. I kept it formal, controlled, safe—for her as much as for me.
“I won’t leave men here,” I said. “You’re right. It would endanger more than it protects. I know you’ll take care of your village.”
Her chin lifted slightly, a gesture that might’ve been showing relief or hiding sorrow. Though maybe I was just hoping for the last.
“Thank you,” she said eventually.
I nodded once. It felt like tearing a hole in my chest and squeezing my heart until it stopped, but I forced out the truth: “Lunette, you’re always welcome in Tir Larethia, no matter what happens. No matter what.”
And then there was nothing left to say. If I spoke again, I would break. I didn’t understand why leaving felt like dying. I’d lost battles before. I’d lost men.
This was one woman in a mountain village I’d known for less than a fortnight. The math didn’t add up, and some quiet, frightened part of me knew it. The rest of me didn’t care.
The rest of me already knew I’d be measuring the rest of my life against my short time with her.
I turned toward the door. Each step away from her felt measured in loss. I hesitated—just long enough to be human, not long enough to be weak.
Right on time, two of my men came in carrying a newly fashioned door. It looked as if it had been made out of parts of the wagon Isca rode in on. I walked out the threshold, still limping, closer to death than I’d been when I nearly bled out.
I’d spent decades being exactly who was required of me. For one week, I’d been something else entirely. I’d had someone who’d looked at me like I was worth the trouble. And it was already over.
Leaves crunched underfoot as I stepped away from the threshold. Behind me, the smell of baking spices, citrus, and one territorial, yet loveable, little veska faded. Wood thudded into place where my life had crashed into hers.
The last sounds I heard before returning to my old life were the sluggish pounding of my heart and the hammering of new hinges sealing the space I would always regret leaving.