Chapter 14 #4
Tears coursed down his solemn face. She had loved him—a confusing love, but not all love was so tidy. Even through his manipulations, he’d believed what he was doing was love as well.
“And... If you hadn’t wandered onto our little farm when I was eight, my life would have taken a very different path.
I never would have ended up at the Reliquary, met Castien.
Fabrien wouldn’t have seen me and claimed me like a prize.
And I never would have made the gruesome choice that brought me home.
If I’d never done any of those things, Taven, I would never have met Jesstin.
I would never have known what it is to be truly, unselfishly loved. ”
“Elloven! You’re awake.”
She spun around and found another old friend she only barely recognized. Sesto had to be close to Taven’s age but looked at least twenty years younger. Healthy, spry. “Sesto! My goodness, it’s so good to see you!”
“And you, Lady Elloven. And you.” Sesto smiled and rapped the doorframe. He sighed twice. “How are you... Can you walk? Should you be walking?”
“I think I can. I’d like to try anyway,” she said. “Taven helped me.”
“And good on him for it. But Taven should rest now. Why don’t you come to the kitchen, and we’ll feed you?”
Elloven turned back. Taven’s cloudy eyes had drifted to something on the other side of the room. “I’ll come back later, and we’ll talk some more.” She wobbled to a stand, but it was easier than she’d expected. She clasped his hand in hers and gave it a squeeze before following Sesto into the hall.
“Where’s Jesstin?” she asked.
“How are you?” Sesto gripped her upper arms as his eyes conducted an intense examination.
“I’m alive, but beyond that, I’m not sure,” she said. “But where is Jesstin?”
“You have been through something singularly incredible,” Sesto said. “There’s no way to know how it will affect you.”
His tone immediately set her on edge. “Something’s wrong. Isn’t it?”
Sesto released her. “Elloven, none of us have seen you in thirty-three years, and we only want to ensure you’re all right. Come, sit. Daire’s been dying to feed you.”
“I am all right.” She squeezed his shoulder with a harried smile. “I am. Just not yet myself and trying to adjust to all this.”
“As are we all,” he said. “Jesstin is fine. He went out for a walk.”
“What time is it?”
“A couple of hours yet until dawn.”
She blinked hard. “Did he say why he wanted to go for a walk in the middle of the night?”
“You’re both trying to adjust,” Sesto answered. Maybe it was the maturing of time, or maybe her instincts were right, but his guarded delivery only made her more determined to find Jesstin.
Elloven had been so hurt he’d kept the truth about Gennady from her that she’d convinced herself he was keeping even more secrets. After all he’d done to prove himself, she’d assumed the worst without even giving him an opportunity to explain.
But did it really matter? He’d traveled to the netherworld for her. Brought her back to life. They loved one another. Not everything had to be so bloody complicated.
“Then I’ll take one as well,” she said, undeterred by the concern in Sesto’s eyes. Until she saw Jesstin was truly fine, she’d never relax. “We have so much catching up to do, Sesto, and I sincerely look forward to it.”
Jesstin had found a dry spot in a bog marsh down the hill from the croft. The frogs’ songs and the occasional cresting of snakes and other strange creatures were the only sounds, which left plenty of room for thinking.
He’d spent the past hour contemplating everything Sesto and Daire had told him about his family.
The children becoming wives and husbands.
.. wedding into other noble houses, where they’d become the ancestors of stewards and barons.
Grandchildren. Great-grandchildren not far off.
He wondered what they all looked like, if he’d recognize them on a village road.
But his focus was all over the place, and no matter how hard he tried to redirect them, his thoughts kept drifting back to Elloven.
He hadn’t had the courage to even face her yet—even look at her, to see for himself that she was alive and breathing, that he’d saved her.
He’d intended to tell her the truth the moment they were safe, but in retrospect, that was ridiculous.
Her recovery was unpredictable. Who knew when she’d even wake.
Her body had been suspended by magic for thirty-three years, never moving and never changing.
Would she be the same? Would she wake? Walk, talk?
Even if all of that worked out perfectly, he still had to get her out of Rivenholde.
He couldn’t just walk away after everything and hope she found her way home.
All his rationalizations burned like excuses though. He could find a hundred valid reasons to delay. Problem was, he could no longer tell whether they were for his benefit or hers.
Snapping branches and squishing boots cut through the quiet. He knew it was her. He didn’t need to look.
“Of course you’re in the last place I check,” she said lightly as she made her way to him. “Where are we? I don’t remember this at all.”
She was different. She wasn’t the same at all.
No, that wasn’t quite accurate. Yes, she’d changed, but from the Elloven he’d watched die on the stones of the sept.
She was exactly the Elloven he remembered from the Infinitum, beautiful and bold and brave and strong, except now she was living, breathing, existing, and he realized, with absolutely devastating clarity, that this was the moment when everything would fall apart.
“We’ve never been here.” His flesh was on fire. Her presence. The anticipation of her absence. His heart was in a kiln. “How are you... feeling? You look...”
“Alive? It will be a while before I’m used to... this... but I’ll get there.” Elloven searched for a place to sit with him. Her face creased in confusion when he stood instead.
“I guess it worked,” he said numbly.
“You guess? Look.” She revealed a small abrasion on her forearm. Light beads of dried blood ran along the scratches. “I ran into some brambles looking for you. Look.”
Jesstin couldn’t stand still. He wasn’t in the right mind for the conversation she wanted.
She’d come with expectations he couldn’t meet.
He’d returned the woman he loved to life, but he couldn’t find any joy, in any of it.
“What am I looking at?” Stop delaying. Stop looking for reasons to keep her.
“The blood.” She waved her arm closer to his face. “It’s red! I mean, of course it’s red. It was always red when I was alive before, but it means this isn’t some wild dream.”
His gut twisted. She was there, she was alive, and she was perfect, but what she could never be was his. What a life they could have made together.
Even the fantasy was a betrayal.
“You did this. I shouldn’t have doubted you. I owe you everything, Jess.”
He could watch her chest rise and fall for hours and hours.
“But at a minimum, I owe you an apology.”
“What?” He shook his head to clear it. “Why?”
“I was emotional, and I never gave you a chance to explain when you told me about Gen, which isn’t how we treat people we love.
After all those months we spent learning to communicate, you deserved better than how I reacted.
” She pressed her hands to his chest and gazed up at him.
How beautiful she was, even with tears glossing her eyes.
How broken his heart was, seeing the end before she could.
He wasn’t ready. He’d never be ready. “The love I have for you is bigger than that. It comes without conditions. I’m not.
.. This is new for me, Jesstin. Until I met you, I didn’t know love could be unconditional.
I certainly didn’t know it could be safe. ”
“Fuck,” Jesstin swore quietly. Now she felt guilty? She was worried about what he deserved? “Fuck.”
“What? Why would you say... What’s wrong?” Elloven rested her fingers beneath his chin. “Have you slept at all?”
Jesstin wrenched out of her hold, more roughly than he’d intended.
His eyes held hers long enough to read the anguish, the panic.
It was a look that said everything. She was reliving the past months and second-guessing every moment of them, wondering if his feelings had changed or if he’d played her.
He was so tempted to go with that, to break her heart the old-fashioned way and be done with it, but he hadn’t chosen the truth to weasel out of it now. “I don’t want your apology, Elloven.”
“You’re not yourself. I understand. I’m not either. I don’t even know what I’m feeling right now. We’ve just been through hell.” Her timorous, climbing pitch was heartrending. “Maybe you should rest, and we’ll talk more after—”
“Elloven, I am exactly who I’ve always been!” Jesstin shouted.
She fell back a step, stunned into silence.
His heart battered his chest wall like a boat crashing against a pier in a storm. He took a breath to right himself, to take a step back and try again. “The devil was always in me, but you chose to see something that wasn’t there.”
She folded her hands over her mouth. “How am I supposed to know what’s right with you? You traveled to the netherworld for me, resurrected me, told me you love me. Made love to me, Jesstin. You chose to do those things.”
“I didn’t choose to love you.” Jesstin sputtered a rueful laugh. “That happened against my better judgment.”
“Your... what?” Her mouth fell wide. Color slowly left her stunned face. “What are you saying?”
What was he saying? His confession would have been more than enough to clear the lie between them.
She needs to walk away with zero doubts about the monster I am.
“You’d be clawing my face to take back your apology if you knew what I’d been holding back.” Spittle flew as his courage ramped. “You once said that when you got what you needed in Rivenholde, you’d search for Gennady’s killer yourself.”