Chapter 26
Nic paced, panic catching at the edge of every thought. He’d shoved the flower into his pocket, leaving its threat to Dashiell’s life burning against his leg.
End it, or he will be next.
Awful words, but that someone had stolen the flower from the vowsmith’s room made them all the more frightening.
Dashiell was in danger. He needed to get out of the house while he still could, contract be damned, yet the duke’s words still rang loud in Nic’s ears.
He could not risk his mother being sent away or being sacrificed to the king’s men when they came asking questions.
She had been alone in this wretched house since her marriage, more prisoner than wife, and he could not let her down when she needed him most.
A tap sounded on the door. “Nic?”
Dashiell. Nic wasn’t ready to face him, but fear that someone might attack the vowsmith if he stood out there alone sent Nic scrambling for the lock. With the flower still heavy in his pocket, he pulled the door open upon Dashiell’s relieved expression.
“Oh thank God.” The vowsmith stepped inside and closed the door firmly behind him. “Even though I knew you would likely sleep all day, I’ve still been beside myself with worry. How are you? Should you be up?”
He gripped Nic’s hands as he spoke, and it was all Nic could do not to pull away, needing to calm his own panic. “I… I just needed to move,” he said. “The doctor gave me something for the pain that knocked me out for a few hours.”
“He’s not worried about the wound, is he?”
“No. It’s fine.”
Nic needed to tell him about the threat that had been waiting, needed to tell him that he could not be in Nic’s rooms, that they couldn’t be together even for now, but under Dashiell’s intent stare, the words twisted up on his tongue.
Nic extricated his hands, needing not to be so close. “Are you staying?” he asked as lightly as he could. “Or did you just drop by to check on me?”
“I don’t know.”
There was something heavy in the words that set Nic’s heart thumping hard against his ribs. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Dashiell said, stepping closer, “that I don’t want to stay at all. I want to go. I want to break the lock-in and leave. With you.”
“What?”
Another step. “I cannot bear to lose you, Nic, cannot bear to sprint down that hallway again and be too late. But even without that danger, I… I can’t keep doing this.
I know that all sense says we have no future, but I cannot accept that.
I won’t. Not when we could just walk away and never look back. ”
For a moment Nic could only stare, a rush of joy at those words hastily souring, for no amount of determination or love could change the cold facts.
To run away would shame Leaf in the eyes of society.
Would shame Dashiell’s family and utterly destroy his career.
It would ruin the Monterris name for good, and worst of all would mean leaving Nic’s mother behind.
“We can’t do that.”
Dashiell closed the rest of the space between them with a few quick steps and took Nic’s face in gentle hands.
“Yes, we can, Nic, listen to me. I don’t care about my career—no, I mean it,” he added when Nic scoffed.
“There have been times since I arrived when even I could not fathom the risks I took to be with you, until I realised I didn’t care if I was caught, not really, because if I ruined the contract, then perhaps somehow we could be together after all.
” He huffed a laugh at that and looked away, cheeks heating.
“Shameful, I know,” he admitted, striding to the window as though to avoid Nic’s gaze.
“Not that that was my plan, just that some part of me always knew I would never be able to give you up once I had found you again. That I might have to decide between my career and you and that you would win every time.”
They were the sort of words Nic had always thought he wanted to hear, yet they were all wrong, because Dashiell had thought only of his own sacrifices.
When Nic didn’t answer, Dashiell turned back from the window, the afternoon light limning his dark hair. “I said there might come a time when I stopped caring about the consequences. It seems now we’ve reached it. I want you, Nic, and I don’t care what it takes to have you.”
Words that filled Nic’s heart as utterly as they chilled it, Dashiell not caring how many others were left in ruins for his love. In Nic’s head, Silla’s warning rang loud.
Sometimes the strongest love is like a poison, and the more you drink the more monstrous you become, until you are standing in a wasteland of your own making.
He stared at the vowsmith, at the fire in his eyes and the stubborn set of his jaw, and the fear that no explanation would ever be enough shivered through him.
Even the smallest possibility that Dashiell might still break the contract no matter what Nic said was too great a risk when it was his mother’s life that hung in the balance.
He couldn’t even show Dashiell the threat penned on the flower, because with his life and his heart in danger, the vowsmith would have only greater reason to break the contract himself.
The realisation of what Nic had to do sickened him to his soul.
End it, or he will be next.
“That’s a lot to sacrifice for some good fucks.” Nic heard his own voice, dismissive and cruel, and though he could see no other path but to push Dashiell away, he hated himself for such words.
Dashiell’s brows contracted, all confusion.
“What? What are you talking about? I love you. I’ve always loved you and I will always love you.
” He stepped closer, sending Nic’s heart fluttering in his chest. “Nic, I know I am not worthy of you. I have always known that, but I would break a thousand contracts if it meant having the chance to prove myself, to one day hope to deserve you.”
The tug toward Dashiell was visceral, the urge to throw everything and everyone away for this man so strong it was frightening. Nic swallowed it all down.
“You are more than worthy, Dash, but my future is here and it always has been.”
For a moment Dashiell just stared at him and Nic forced himself to stare back, to hold his ground and not break, to grip tight to the knowledge that this was the only way and just. Not. Break.
“What?” Dashiell’s eyes darted about Nic’s face, hunting for understanding. “What is this about?”
“What this?”
“This you!” Dashiell cried. “Last night you wanted to marry me. Today it’s just goodbye?”
Nic made himself shrug. “Last night I’d almost been murdered.”
The hurt that crossed Dashiell’s face was like a punch to the gut.
“Nic.” He lifted his hand as though to touch Nic’s cheek, only to pull it away.
“No.” Such a short, curt word, snapped as though at the universe.
“No. That is not how this ends. I want you in my life, Nic, and I don’t care what I have to sacrifice for it to happen.
If I break the contract, it falls on me, not you.
It isn’t neat, but if this is the way it goes, then let’s take it.
Let’s take it and run and never look back. ”
Nic wanted to scream, to throw all the reasons they couldn’t into Dashiell’s face, but Dashiell was no fool—he knew them all, he just didn’t care.
“Run?” Despite his frustration, the slight sneer Nic achieved around the word made him sick. “If I wanted to run from my life, don’t you think I would have done so already?”
“Nic.” Dashiell lightly clasped his face in his hands and Nic wanted to pull away as much as he wanted to lean in. “Listen to me, please. We have but one life, and rare are the moments we get to choose what it can look like.”
“Choose?” Nic pulled free so sharply he almost lost his balance. “You say that like I’ve ever been able to choose anything.”
Nic tried to move past him, but Dashiell stepped in the way. “Then choose now.”
“Choose now?” A flare of anger tore through him and Nic threw up his arms in mock defeat. “Then I choose to do my duty and stop torturing myself with vain hopes. Choose to stop living in snatches of what might have been. Choose to stop pretending the world is anything but what it is!”
Silence choked the room and Nic’s every breath came sharp and fast, his throat aching with the effort of holding back tears. This was it. This was really it. The end. And in a few days, they would never see each other again.
A step scuffed nearer, and Dashiell’s low rumble spoke all too close.
“I don’t know why you’re doing this. Tell me you don’t think we could be happy.
That you think we’re not worth sacrificing for—that I’m not worth sacrificing for.
Tell me to leave. Tell me never to come back.
Tell me that’s what you want and I will go. ”
A tear ran its trail down Nic’s cheek, followed by another.
He didn’t look up. Couldn’t. Dashiell was standing there, right there, so close he could reach out and press a hand to his chest, could feel that fierce heart beating and beating for him, but Nic could only close his hands into tight fists.
“Don’t make me do this.” His words were barely a whisper.
“Tell me you will be happy. Tell me you will not live with regret.”
“Please, don’t.”
“Tell me!” Dashiell gripped his shoulders. “Look at me, Nic. Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t want to be together. That you don’t want to fight for us.”
Nic looked up. It was easier to meet Dashiell’s gaze than he thought it would be, as though something inside him had already died and could no longer grieve.
“I don’t want to fight for us,” he said, the dead monotone coming out steady. “I don’t want this.”
Inside he was screaming, but Nic held his ground as Dashiell’s gaze hunted his face, his grip tightening upon Nic’s shoulders.
For a moment it seemed he would keep arguing, that he would break down Nic’s defences, and almost Nic wished he would no matter how impossible it would be to bear the wasteland they left behind.
But after a few long moments, Dashiell let him go. Nodded curtly.