Chapter 44 #4
Anna’s posture loosened, and she sat back on her heels. He approached the cot as he would a firing line, dread staying his feet. She scooted to the very edge, gaze locked on his.
Despite it all, his hands were steady as he took her face in a gentle hold, his thumbs swiping over soft, tear-stained cheeks. “Ready?”
She nodded.
David soaked the magic into his voice, but when he spoke, it emerged cold, like sugar ice crystals. “You—you don’t love me, do you?”
Her head tilted into his touch as she succumbed to his magic. “I do.”
He forced more power through his vocal cords. “No, you don’t.”
“I do,” she said, tone more certain.
He tried a different tack. “No, that’s not right. You’re a pixie. You wouldn’t fall for a keila, would you?”
She rose slowly to her knees, drawn by his magic. “I think I would. If he was a good man.”
An invisible blade jabbed straight through his ribs at that nugget of truth, but he ignored it. “That doesn’t matter because you didn’t fall for me, did you?”
She stared into his eyes, unblinking. “I did.”
“When?”
“I—I don’t remember.” Her voice turned dreamy. “Why don’t I remember?”
He latched onto that. “If you don’t remember, then how can it be real? Maybe it was a dream.”
She fell into bewildered silence.
“You don’t even remember why you slept with me. Do you?”
Confusion knotted her brow. “I—don’t know.”
“You were just curious,” he said. “Remember?”
“I— Yeah. I do remember.”
“It wasn’t because you loved me.”
The tiniest smile lifted her lips. “It was,” she said as if she’d only just recalled. “Remember that kiss? It was its own kind of magic.”
Fucking hell. Her tenderness was a delicate sort of torture. “It was,” he said, brushing the sugar over every cadence. “But it wasn’t love, was it?”
The confusion on her face traveled a steady road into doubt.
“Your heart was never broken,” he said.
Anna’s lips parted and she blinked a handful of times. “I think…it was.”
His thumbs grazed her cheeks again, and he ignored the pain in his own chest as he soaked more magic into his voice, enough to make him dizzy. “No, it wasn’t. Because you never loved me.”
“I didn’t?” she asked as if she didn’t believe him.
“We had some fun, and then we stopped, right? I think it was your idea to stop.”
“It was,” she said, voice slurred as she filled in her own details. “I thought it was best. People would have talked about us.”
A cold sweat broke over David’s skin when he dug deep into her psyche with his next words, injecting magic straight into the most primitive parts of her. “And you don’t love me, Anna. You never did.”
Finally, finally she succumbed. Her pupils blew out until the blue disappeared. Inside her, that shining strand of love went numb, strangulated by the tourniquet of his magic. “I don’t love you,” she whispered.
He pressed his lips to her temple, then whispered into her ear, “I’m going to let you go, and when I do, you won’t remember this conversation, but you’ll feel better, Anna.
You won’t hurt. Your heart will no longer be broken.
You won’t love me, and you won’t remember that you ever did. Do you understand?”
He’d never been able to change someone’s feelings, but he’d never exerted this much energy in the attempt. If it didn’t work, at least he could tell her that he’d tried his best.
But in the seconds that followed, the entirety of her emotional landscape remodeled inside her, eradicating him, and he knew he’d succeeded.
He’d…succeeded.
The rabid animal in his chest fell silent, curling up in its lonely ice prison.
“Tell me you understand,” he commanded.
“I…understand.” Her tone was robotic. Drugged. Breathless.
His fingers dragged across her skin as he released her, likely the last time he’d ever touch her this way. He stepped away, watching carefully for any sign it hadn’t worked.
Clear blue eyes took stock of his hands, his clothes stained with her blood, and finally his face. Anna’s head tilted as bemusement danced over her suddenly bright emotions. “David? Is something wrong?”
He stood still, afraid of what came next. He forced his stare away from her, bouncing from the wall to the cot to the floor—anywhere but her. “No. Nothing is wrong.”
She glanced in the multiple directions of his gaze, then returned her attention to him. “What are you looking for? Did you lose something?”
His eyes fell shut, and he batted away the acrid laughter that wanted to surface. Had he lost something tonight? Not really. He’d lost Anna the moment he sensed that connection to Isobel dig a grave in his chest.
But he must have still believed in the potential between them, in the mere possibility, because whatever was happening behind his ice felt like someone had taken a drill to his very foundation and cracked it to pieces. He wanted to rail and cackle and be sick all at the same time.
Yet he couldn’t do any of that. Anna wanted him gone, and he could do that for her. He’d do anything for her.
Even disappear.
“Yeah, I did lose something,” David finally said. “But it doesn’t matter. I can’t get it back.”