Chapter 34
THIRTY-FOUR
GAVIN SMYTH
I sleep best when I’m dreaming of you. If I’m lucky enough, it feels like you’re here.
—UNSENT CORRESPONDENCE FROM QUEEN ARYELLA I TO THE BUTCHER OF NYRIDA
393 Years Ago
I was soaked from head to toe. Early winter rain battered down from the harrowing sky in icy torrents. Years ago, exhaustion from a trek like this through the northern Warrich mountains would have been remedied with a stiff glass of whiskey and a few hours of sleep.
Tonight, my back fucking hurt.
I was getting older.
It had been nine years since I last saw her, and time had done nothing to soothe the pain.
A part of me wished for the relief that death would offer.
I didn’t want to age another year without her by my side.
The moment I saw her, I knew that a life without her would be no life at all.
The last nine years proved that true. They had been dull, empty, and altogether horrible.
I still barely slept, having grown addicted to resting with her in my arms during the ten days we’d had together.
Her face flickered through my memory. Bright, smiling, and breathtaking. My chest warmed despite the chill. A stark reminder that I couldn’t dream about her if I was dead. I had to hang on.
I still spent a great deal of time convincing myself that I hadn’t imagined those four months of bliss.
Her pure love and warmth and light and life.
She made me feel joy so divine, I was convinced she was an angel.
Subjecting myself to an eternity of remembering her—even if memories were all I ever got—would be better than never knowing her at all. She was my gravity. My reason.
Today, she would have been twenty-seven.
Only she wasn’t. Somewhere, fast asleep, she was nineteen, a resting portrait of angelic perfection and youthful beauty.
My stomach churned. She would always be perfect, but I was running out of time. I likely had already. The note he magically sent me years ago made that clear.
She is asleep at nineteen years old, and she will be for a very long time. Move on. Find someone else. It’s what she would want for you.
—SW
I didn’t move on, and the thought of having anyone but her made me feel sick inside.
I had yet to meet Simeon Whitlock, but I dreaded every correspondence he sent, each attempt to bribe me into giving up my wife . Now, after nearly a decade of hunting for him, I stood outside of a small log cabin surrounded by trees. I’d finally found him, which meant I was closer to finding her.
The crunch of wet snow beneath my boots propelled me forward. I didn’t bother knocking. Something told me he knew I was coming. I threw open the door, barged inside, and looked around. A small kitchen and table. A bed in the corner. A few chairs and a sofa next to a hearth.
The sorcerer sat unbothered in a chair beside the fire with a book in his lap.
He had silver hair, nearly white, with spectacles and green eyes identical to my Ella’s.
He looked poised and intelligent but thin and weak enough that I could snap him in half if I needed to, magical powers aside.
Simeon paused but didn’t look up as he calmly said, “Hello, Smyth.”
“Where is she?” I growled.
He pondered for a moment before looking up and frowning. “I don’t believe we’ve had a proper introduction.”
“WHERE IS MY WIFE?”
My roar shook the walls of the small cabin. It took everything in me to not pummel him into a pulp, but he was the only one who knew where she was.
Simeon watched me in wary silence, like he was waiting for something. Eventually, he sighed like I was just a mild irritation. “Close the door behind you, please.”
Reluctantly, I obeyed, then took the time studying him.
His resemblance to his niece was uncanny.
I had never met Christabel, but I imagined she looked much the same.
Bright green eyes. Silver-blond hair. The same mild widow’s peak I’d noticed while stroking my fingers through Ella’s hair as she slept.
I had been too afraid to miss a single moment, so I’d memorized everything I could.
“I have to say.” Simeon tapped his fingers on his glass before pointing it at me. “I underestimated you. Nine years is a long time to search for some girl you barely knew.”
“Nine years is nothing ,” I spat. “And she’s not just some girl . She’s my wife. Where. The fuck. Is. She?”
“Smyth.” He leaned forward and clasped his hands in his lap. “There are plenty of women in this world?—”
“There’s only one of her!”
“You need to let her go!” he urged. “She’s not meant for you.”
I kept my fists clenched at my sides, desperate to hit him. “I’ve become capable of many things. Letting her go is not one of them. Give her back to me.”
“You’re thirty-one years old, Smyth!” Simeon rose to his feet. “Even if I grant your request, she’d wake up and be over a decade younger than you.”
My stomach churned at the reality that plagued me daily.
I knew that she would never look at me the way she once had.
Sometimes, I wondered if I should let her go and live out the rest of this life alone, surviving only on memories of her.
I could just exist, then disappear, and she wouldn’t one day be burdened by the presence of a man ten years her senior obsessed with every breath she took.
Why the fuck would she want me now?
But then I remembered our promises.
Don’t ever let me stop fighting for this. For us . For freedom and for everyone who can’t fight. And… don’t ever let me stop fighting for myself.
I would be what she needed, whatever that was.
“I assumed that wouldn’t hold you back,” Simeon sneered. “After all, you had no problem ruining her the first time around.”
Darkness clouded my vision, so thick and unnatural I could barely see as I lunged forward and slammed my fist into the center of Simeon Whitlock’s face. A vile crunch split the air, and he flew backward against the chair and flat on his ass.
Blood gushed down over his mouth and chin, but he didn’t retaliate. He fished a kerchief out of his pocket and dabbed the mess away. I wondered if, deep down, he knew he deserved the blow.
“She chose me,” I hissed. “She lov?—”
“She chose you because you were the only choice she had! She would have latched on to a mangy mutt in a Brinnean back alley.”
“That’s not true. She—” My words caught in my throat. Was it true? Was he right?
No. He was wrong.
“She loved me,” I reassured myself out loud, “and you took our life away from us.”
“You can blame me for all of this.” Simeon’s eyes darkened with conceit and hatred as he rose to his feet. “But it was you who was reckless.” His self-righteous stoicism cracked, just for a moment. “And you have no idea how incredibly reckless you were.”
“What are you talking about?” I demanded, stomach souring with dread. He stayed silent and stone-faced. “What happened?” I croaked, stepping forward. “What happened to her? Tell me!” I raised my voice. “Tell me or?—”
“She was eighteen years old, Smyth!” he shouted. “How does it feel to have ruined an eighteen-year-old’s life simply because you couldn’t keep your bastard cock out of her? And for what? Just to have someone untouched?”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I gripped his collar and shoved him into the wall, then held him a few inches off the ground I wanted to slam and stomp his head into.
Consumed by disgust so potent I wanted to crawl out of my skin.
“It was never fucking like that, you sick asshole! She’s your niece .
Your family . She’s nothing but a tool to you.
And the moment I saw her, she became my everything . ”
She was an angel. A gift from the gods. She was his blood, his only living family, the daughter of the sister he claimed to love, and he spoke of her like she was an object to be disregarded and bent to his every whim. How could he claim to care ?
I roared in his face and dropped him to the floor. He stood quickly but leaned against the table, struggling to find his balance.
“Years ago,” he panted, “before Molochai and I acquired our power and overthrew the Rexus family, my sister and I lived in a small farming village on the northwest outskirts of Brinnea.” He wiped his nose with the handkerchief and scowled at the blood there.
“My sister always had a way of making men lose their senses. All she had to do was look their way, and they were willing to go to absurd lengths to have her to themselves. I had to keep an ax by the door just to fend them off.”
“Do you think you can scare me off with a fucking ax?” I hoped he would try so I could snap it in half, pick it apart, and use the pieces to slice and splinter his skin until he told me where she was.
Simeon huffed out a humorless laugh. “No. I do not.”
“Then why are you telling me this?”
“Because she would never choose you again! You got lucky once . Just like her mother, she will have an infinite number of choices. I will ensure she makes the best choice next time.”
My body vibrated with rage. Shadows crept in through the edges of my vision, intent on consuming me. The thought of another man’s hands on my Ella made me want to do violent, horrific things.
“Please.” I forced my shaking voice to calm. “I love her. She’s all I want.”
“Loved,” Simeon tried to correct me. “You loved her.”
“ Love! ” I lunged forward and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt for a second time.
“I love her! I will always love her! She is the only thing I have ever loved and the only thing I will ever love! Do you hear me, sorcerer ?” I tightened my grasp, longing to feel his neck crushing beneath my fingers. “You. Cannot. Stop. Me.”
“ I don’t have to stop you,” he answered dryly. “ Time will stop you.”
I stumbled backward, needing the full length of the small cabin between us. If I didn’t, I would kill him, and she would be lost and asleep forever.
“I know what’s right for her,” Simeon remarked.
“The fuck you do!” I roared. “You put bars on her window, Whitlock! You trapped and smothered her and made her believe she wasn’t worth breaking out!”
He stilled, a grim pall falling over his features. “There are forces in play you don’t understand.”
“Then tell me!” I threw my arms wide in surrender. “Help me understand! Do to me whatever you did to her so that when she wakes, I am there .”
Simeon shook his head. “She’ll never remember you. Her memories are gone.”
The pain of reality threatened to put me on the floor. “Give them back to her!”
“I can’t. It’s done.”
My hands fell helpless at my sides. Simeon Whitlock was a liar, but something told me he wasn’t lying about this .
At least I had my own memories. Her sweet laughter and the perfect, bright smile she saved only for me.
How she wrapped her arms around me and rested her head against my chest, my lips in her hair.
How she trusted me with every part of herself.
I cherished each moment we’d ever shared, played them repeatedly like a divine, entrancing melody that had no business existing in a world so harsh.
She was precious. She was worth it.
It hurt. Gods, it fucking hurt , but I was willing to be what she needed, even if she never remembered us. Even if what she needed me to be in her new life was something other than hers .
“I’ll be what she needs.”
Simeon scoffed. “ You are the last thing she needs, and you’ll be in the ground long before I bring her back.”
No. I simply refused. I had promised her “ whatever it takes ,” and I meant it.
“I’ll find a way,” I vowed.
“There is no way, Smyth.”
Resolve straightened my spine. There was a way. If the questionable things I’d already done didn’t send me straight to whatever hell the gods had in store for men like me, this would.
I would do it anyway.
Simeon’s door slammed behind me as I left him alone, bleeding, still underestimating the lengths I was willing to go for her.
It was time to find my father.