CHAPTER SIXTY #3
She shook her head, almost imperceptibly. “It’s not that simple.”
“Try, Emmery. For what little remains of my sanity.” His throat worked. “How do you feel about me?”
“It doesn’t matter. What I want doesn’t matter. My fate is decided.”
“What you want is the only thing that matters. And if this is it, you could stay here. Forget about him and be with me. We can figure out this prophecy. This fever. Together.” His eyes softened and echoed his plea. “Stay with me.”
She couldn’t. There was no path with Dez. Zyphira had made that clear.
He tilted his head, and his brows drew together as he gently asked, “What are you so afraid of?”
Too much. She feared too many things, the stakes too vast.
His thumb slowly swept over her birthmark.
“I could care for you better with my hands tied behind my back, struck deaf and blind. I know you, Emmery. I hear you without words. I see you without looking. Everything in me recognizes you and would in any life. In any past or future. Eternal darkness or blinding light. The beginning or the end and every in between. You and I were meant to find each other. And I know you feel it too.” His fingertips brushed the curve of her cheekbone and her eyes fluttered shut.
This was something. Something was here. She just didn’t know what.
He whispered, “Don’t you know I would love you so well if you let me?”
And it nearly killed her—stopped her heart, tilted her world’s axis, and reversed gravity.
Love? He would love her? The word injected unearned hope into her heart, because isn’t that all she ever wanted? For someone to see her and love her anyway?
Falling for Dez would be easy: to sink into each other, love his kind smile, how he cared for her, protected her body and heart. She could slip into a life with him. Tumble into it. Fall together.
Because he’d already held her darkness and pain and hadn’t turned away. He’d seen her at her worst and still gazed at her like she was his north star.
Her breath snagged but she managed, “You love me?”
But he stared at her, opened his mouth, shut it. Did the same again. Like he tried to find a way not to answer the question. To work around it and lie. And each time he did a little piece of her cracked.
Of course he didn’t love her. His hesitance said everything she needed to hear. It didn’t matter anyway. No reality existed for them.
Her gravity reversed, her world tilted back, and her heart kicked into a gallop as she fell from the sky into the dark ocean below. Annihilating her.
Emmery raised her hand to the crystal and ripped it from her neck before she thrust it toward him.
His eyes fixed on her fist but he made no move to take it. “Keep it. I meant it when I said it gives me peace to know you have it.”
“I don’t want it.” The chain jingled as she shook her hand at him. “I don’t want any of this. I—I can’t want it.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at the ground.
Summoning her strenght, she heaved a breath.
“I’m not yours, and you need to accept that.
Maybe if things were different, in another life, if we were different people, but we aren’t.
This is our reality.” Her eyes burned. “Cyrilla hasn’t told you yet because of everything, but she told me while you were gone.
Soren is sick, Dez. He has the fever.” She hated saying it.
Hated to be the one to tell him, but he had to know. Had to understand why.
“No.” The word held the same sorrow as when he’d seen his mum.
Destonne stared helplessly at her and for a moment he looked so young.
Like the child in him that had never felt his father’s love, the one who had been sent away, shamed, and lost anyone he ever cared for, peeked out from that hard exterior. “No. It—it’s not. He can’t be.”
She turned away. “You need to let me go so I can fix this. So I can find Shade.”
When she brushed past him, he caught her wrist, his eyes glossy. “Don’t go, Emmery. Don’t leave.” His breath stuttered. “I’ll beg. I’ll do anything. Please don’t go. I’m desperate. I—I need you.”
For a moment she almost forgot everything. Almost turned around and fell into his arms, if only he would hold her again.
But then she felt it, a heat she knew like the back of her hand, the air in her lungs, the foundation of her bones, the blood in her veins. And as her gaze fell, she saw it. And her entire world narrowed on it.
That flicker of gold. The only thing in this life that belonged to her and her alone. Because at Dez’s fingertips—
It was her flame that sparked there. Her flame she realized he wanted all along. And he’d stolen it with the bond.
His eyes widened as they met hers.
Liar. Liar. Liar. Her mind chanted it. Knocked it into her. Sliced her open and shoved it inside.
“Don’t, Emmery, it’s—”
Rage unlike anything she had ever known flooded her, and she roared loud enough to shake the walls, bring the castle to the ground, and collapse a damn mountain. “How fucking dare you? You—you manipulative bastard!”
The crystal shattered in her palm as her khaos flame cut through it and the pieces sliced into her flesh. Blood streamed down her hand but she leaned into the bite, too angry to do anything else.
Then she screamed and hurled it at the wall.
It shattered under her fury, and Destonne, the man who didn’t beg, didn’t grovel, and never went to his knees for anyone, crumpled to his knees, his face in his hands as Emmery stalked from the room and didn’t look back.