37. Bastian #2
“You can’t, or you don’t?” Bastian asked. His voice sounded raw. Foreign. “Because I feel things for you, Isolde. I want you. And it would be fucking foolish of us not to do something about it if you want me, too—not in spite of the fact that you’re immortal and I’m not, but because of it.”
Isolde’s gaze met his for the first time since he’d caught up with her. The clear blue of her eyes shone with tears in the firelight. Her bottom lip quivered.
“The thing about being mortal is that you know the time you have is finite.” Bastian pressed his hand against his heart. “My mortal life is too short not to spend the rest of it loving you. So which is it, Isolde? You can’t be with me, or you don’t want to be?”
One single tear slipped down Isolde’s cheek. “I wish I was mortal, Bastian,” she whispered.
I’m immortal, she’d said. I wish I was mortal .
Bastian couldn’t be angry with her, even as he felt his heart shriveling up inside his chest. It would have been different if she’d said, You’re mortal.
I wish that you were immortal . He could have raged at the fact that he’d been wrong about what he thought she felt for him, that he still wasn’t good enough for anyone to love him.
But he could see the pain in her eyes. The anguish at the fact that she wasn’t mortal—not that he was—and that she’d outlive him by hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
“Which is it?” Bastian asked again. “You can’t, or you don’t?”
Another tear slipped free. As soon as it touched her skin, her face smoothed out into a placid, unreadable mask. Even still, that look shone in her eyes. Protectiveness and fondness and hope.
What he still wanted to believe was love.
“I don’t want you, Bastian.”
He let her go this time.
Bastian stood rooted to the spot as Isolde wove her way deeper into the crowd, away from him. Every step she took, widening the distance between them, felt like a knife wound to the chest.
A little voice at the back of Bastian’s mind whispered that it was his fault.
That she didn’t want him because he wasn’t good enough for her.
He was lacking something, just like he had been with Anselm and Everett and his biological father, who had killed his mother and never bothered to look for Bastian after he went to Wolf territory.
But—no. He’d seen that look in her eyes. The love. The anguish. The fear.
Bastian didn’t believe that she didn’t want him. But she’d suffered so much pain already, and Bastian had seen the way she panicked when she wasn’t in control. When she found herself in danger and could do nothing to protect herself.
And what greater danger was there than to love someone who was bound to die?
Someone knocked into Bastian from behind, sloshing more ale onto his clothes. He barely noticed—not as he watched Isolde prowl up to a human man with tawny hair and lean close, murmuring something in his ear.
I’m immortal. I wish I was mortal.
Bastian understood. He did. He would grow old and frail, and she would remain unchanged.
Young and beautiful, impervious to sickness and the merciless hand of death, she’d have to watch him age.
She’d count the lines on his face like the numbers of a ticking clock until Bastian died and left her in the world alone.
I don’t want you, Bastian.
Even if he didn’t believe them, those words cut right down to his soul. They cleaved something out of him.
As he watched Isolde wind her arms around the neck of the human man, her hips swaying in time with his, another piece of him cleaved away.
Somehow, Bastian found his way back to his spot against the town hall. Someone pressed a cup of ale into his hand, and he gulped it down without tasting it. The heat of his body burned the alcohol away before it could do anything to numb the pain.
The human man gripped Isolde’s hips, drawing her close. She ground herself against him, her mouth at his ear, and he grinned, dropping his face to bury it in her hair.
Bastian’s skin crawled as he watched them. He wanted nothing more than to look away, to not watch that human man inhale her scent. That perfect, intoxicating scent. The scent that somehow, without noticing, he’d come to think of as his.
He wanted to storm across the square and tear that human man’s hands off Isolde, and then rip his arms out of their sockets. He wanted to flay him alive for daring to touch her, to breathe her in, to think he was remotely worthy of her.
Bastian’s hands trembled with the effort of keeping them by his sides. He locked his knees, forcing himself to stay put.
I don’t want you , Isolde had said.
And even if Bastian didn’t believe her, he would let her go. He wouldn’t chase her. Not unless she said with her own two lips that she hadn’t really meant it. That she did want him, after all.
Slowly, Isolde and the human revolved, turning so that his back was to Bastian, and he could see the way Isolde’s hands flattened against his spine, holding him close. He begged himself not to look at her face, at those wide eyes, bluer than a frozen lake when the winter sun shone on it.
But he couldn’t help himself. He never could, with her.
She was looking right at him.
Bastian’s breath caught in his throat at the look in her eyes. At the pure, unfettered longing there. The sorrow. The desolation.
She gave Bastian a small shake of her head, and turned away.
Her arms slipped from around the human’s neck and she took his hand in hers. The human grinned, his eyes half-lidded with desire as she began to lead him away.
She made it one step, two, before?—
A white Wolf leapt over the crowd.
And lunged right for Isolde, its bloodied maw stretched wide.