Quinn #2
“I still don’t understand how you survived it.” I squeezed Tobias’s hand, a tangible reminder he was safe and here with me. “Let alone kept him from learning anything important.”
Tobias gave the slightest of shrugs, his jaw tight. “Everyone has a breaking point.”
“Except for you. You didn’t break.”
Another infuriating shrug. “Aviel didn’t have the right leverage.”
I scoffed. “If torturing you for years didn’t break you, stealing your magic and letting you rot in that cell wasn’t enough—”
“I spent years wondering if each day was the day I would die, knowing that there was a very good chance it could be.” He lifted my chin, though my gaze was already locked on his.
His eyes flickered as they darted between mine.
“But when things were at their bleakest, all I could think about was you.”
The way he looked at me, the love and pain warring in his gaze, was more than I could bear. My heart caught in my throat, everything I had been about to say slipping into silence.
“It wasn’t a happy thought,” Tobias said, his tone matter of fact, “considering I never thought I’d see you again.
But I wouldn’t give in—not when it meant giving you and Eva up.
And I couldn’t give up either, even when I found myself hoping he would finally kill me…
because there was still the faintest chance that I would find you again one day. ”
His thumb brushed against my cheek, wiping away the tears I hadn’t realized were streaming down my face.
“He couldn’t break me,” Tobias continued hoarsely. “Because to do so he would’ve had to find what he was torturing me for.” He let out a pained laugh, shaking his head. “Don’t you get it, Quinn? My breaking point is you.”
All this time. All this time he loved me, and I mistook distance for indifference.
“If you l—” My voice broke, and I tried again. “If you thought about me like that, why did you spend so long fighting this?”
Tobias’s jaw tensed and for a moment I thought he might not answer. His eyes found me again, reluctantly, the light in them fading. “Because I don’t deserve you, Quinn. I never will.”
“That’s not true—”
“I left,” Tobias snapped. “I left Eva…and I left you. I thought I was keeping both of you safe by keeping you in the dark. Instead, I learned my decisions can’t be trusted and I—” He hung his head like he couldn’t bear to look at me.
“I couldn’t save my mom when Aviel came for her after he killed my dad.
I couldn’t save Eva from what he did to her.
My blood was the reason Aviel was able to find her in the end.
And I couldn’t even help her when she had to face him in Adronix.
” His shoulders slumped, and something in my chest fractured at the broken confession.
“I fail people. That’s what I do. And I… I can’t—I won’t—fail you.”
“You didn’t,” I said, and was rewarded with a quiet scoff.
“You didn’t fail any of us, Tobias.” Tears blurred my vision.
“You spent every day in that hell protecting us after we thought we lost you, something I’ll never be able to thank you enough for.
You aren’t to blame for Aviel’s actions.
And you were only seventeen when your parents died to save you, and they never regretted it. ”
His head snapped up. “How do you know?”
“How do you not?” My voice cracked. “I knew them too, you know. But even if I didn’t, I would know without a doubt that they faced their ends at peace, knowing that their sacrifice meant their children would live on.”
His lower lip trembled, those gold-flecked eyes glistening with unshed tears.
“When my parents died, I at least had the luxury of saying goodbye.” My voice shook at the memory.
“They knew there was a good chance they wouldn’t return, and yet they still went.
” Carefully, I took his trembling hand in mine.
“So I’ll tell you what my mother told me in case something went wrong.
It’s the same thing I tell myself whenever I miss them.
” I blinked away my tears, keeping my voice steady.
“Tobias…it’s not your fault they were taken from this world. You’re how they remain in it.”
Tears streamed down his face, matching the ones on mine. And I was glad of it—that he finally had the courage to take off that mask and let himself feel. That he trusted me enough not to pretend anymore.
“I lost them not long after I thought I lost you,” I whispered. “I barely survived it.”
“I’m sorry,” Tobias said brokenly. “I wish I hadn’t put you through that.
Not coming back sooner might be the thing I regret the most.” He squeezed my hands.
“But there wasn’t a day I didn’t picture coming home to you.
And when I tried to return and ended up captured…
you were the only thing that kept me sane. ”
“My heart’s been broken since the day I thought you died,” I said softly. “I might have put on a happy face, but it was just as much a mask as yours.”
He wiped his tears on the back of his arm in one angry swipe. “You still deserve someone better than me. Someone who isn’t broken. Someone—”
“You’re an idiot,” I snapped, feeling my magic roil as if demanding I reach for him. “Just because I understand why you have the emotional intelligence of a toe doesn’t mean I’m going to wait around for you to figure it out, even if I…”
“Even if you what?”
“Love you.” I shouted, the words tearing free before I could bite them back. “I love you, Tobias Maris, broken pieces and all.” My chest squeezed painfully tight. “I loved you then. But I’m in love with you now.”
The truth rang in the space between us.
“You…” His hand shook as he brushed my tears away. “Do you remember the night before my birthday?”
I frowned up at him. “You know I do.”
“I should have told you then that I loved you.” His throat bobbed.
“I almost did…and every night in that cell I thought about how I missed my chance. That you thought I was dead, and I never told you what you meant to me. And that I needed to find a way out to fix that one fateful mistake.” His light circled around us like tiny stars.
“I am hopelessly, irretrievably in love with you, Quinn Sagray. I always have been.”
I blinked up at him, startled, as his words sank in. “You knew you were in love with me, even then?”
There was something like hope in those gold-flecked eyes. “I don’t remember falling in love with you. I just know I always did.”
My breath caught at the emotion in those words. At his shy smile, so reminiscent of the boy I once knew—the one he kept hidden away until it was safe again.
“Do you really want this?” For the first time, Tobias sounded unsure. “Want me, scars and all?”
After everything we’d been through together, did he really not think he was deserving of love?
“I want all of you, Tobias Maris,” I said adamantly. “Your scars are part of you, and I love everything you are. I love you, too.”
His mouth found mine, insistent and claiming. My fingers threaded through his hair, yanking him closer with the same urgency. I had lost him once, his absence like an echo that refused to fade.
I would never lose him again.
My hand flattened against his heart, needing to feel the wild flutter of his pulse. Its every beat matched mine.
He pulled back, gazing at me like he couldn’t believe this was real. His lips brushed mine in the barest of kisses. “Somehow, despite all my imaginings, you’re even more perfect than I remember.”
I kissed the scars on his neck, his wrists. My power came to my fingertips even as his magic swirled around us, lighting up the dark.
“I wish I hadn’t given up on you.” My voice broke. “I wish I came to this realm sooner. That I was there for you when you needed someone most.”
“You were always with me.” He caught a single curl of my hair, slowly twisting it around his finger, and I shivered under the intensity of his stare.
“I spent every day in that cell picturing you living your life. Picturing you…the bounce of your hair, the curve of your lips, the amber of your eyes.” His thumb brushed against my cheek, then pressed against my lower lip.
“I memorized every part of you, over and over again. Your name was my own personal prayer for salvation, even if I could never say it aloud. Even when I shut it all away so he could never, ever touch you.” His gaze slowly trailed down my face, the weight of it like a physical touch.
“When everything was darkest, you were the light.”
I had given up on wiping away my tears, but Tobias leaned in, kissing the damp corner of each eye.
“When I got back…I didn’t want you to see me like that,” he continued.
“The broken version of the boy you almost kissed. Nevermind that the thought of our first kiss was one of the only things that kept me going.” His laugh was dark and humorless.
“One of the things I missed most when I was in that dungeon was the sky. It’s almost ironic that once I got out, that open space became the thing I feared.
But when you stayed next to me on our ride to Adronix, or training with me in Soleara, it felt like…
like a deep breath in. Like being with you was how I kept breathing. ”
A sob burst from my lips. “You kept me breathing. You kept us safe when we didn’t even know you were alive.” I took his face in my hands. My thumb brushed over his dimple, feeling it deepen beneath my touch. “You can take your mask off and lay it down now. You and your heart are safe with me.”