Chapter 22 A Cruel Kind of Truth #5
I brushed the backs of my fingers along her cheek, avoiding the cut. “Sleep.”
Her hand tightened weakly around mine. “You feel wrong.”
The words went through me. Of course I did. Even half asleep, she felt the place where I had begun stepping back from the binding. She felt the grief I could not let into the room. If she woke fully, she would see too much. Cassie always did.
So I gave her what she needed most.
Calm.
I loosened my shoulders. Slowed my breathing. Let my voice settle into the low cadence that had soothed the binding on the first night, before I knew the comfort might not be mine to give.
“Silas was behind the hunt,” I said.
Her eyes sharpened a little. “We knew that.”
“Now we know enough to look for him.”
“Evelyn?”
“Contained.”
“Good. I hope someone gives her a rash.”
My chest hurt. Only Cassie could lie in bed bruised from a murder attempt and wish an enemy a rash with more venom than some wolves brought to a blood feud.
“I will pass that along to Sava.”
“Do. She’ll know how.”
Her eyes drifted closed, then opened again with effort. “My family?”
“They are pushing to see you.”
She tried to sit up.
I stopped her gently, one hand on her shoulder, no pressure beyond a reminder. “No.”
“My dad?”
“Loud.”
“That tracks.”
“Tessa is asking questions.”
Her gaze found mine. “Is she?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“She is angry.”
“At me?”
“At Grant, I think.”
Even exhausted, Cassie’s expression shifted. A soft, painful awareness crossed her face. “About damn time.”
The words were barely audible.
I wanted to tell her everything. That Tessa had defended her. That her father was afraid beneath the bluster. That Grant was still exactly what Cassie knew him to be, and Tessa had finally begun to see it. I wanted to tell her I would get them out.
I wanted to tell her I would die doing it.
Instead I stroked her hair back from her face.
“You need strength tomorrow.”
“For what?”
“Full moon.”
Her mouth tightened. “Right. The scheduled supernatural disaster.”
“You will need to run if I tell you to run.”
That made her eyes open again, too sharp now.
“Ian.”
I should not have said it that way.
I bent and kissed her brow before she could chase the thread. “If things break badly, you run. You take your family, and you do not look back.”
Her sleepy gaze hardened with a hint of the woman who had argued with wolves while fevered. “I am not agreeing to mysterious instructions from a man doing tragic architecture impressions in my bedroom.”
Despite myself, I almost smiled.
Almost.
“You do not have to agree tonight,” I said. “You only have to sleep.”
“I hate that answer.”
“I know.”
“I’m going to be very irritating about this tomorrow.”
“I am counting on it.”
Her eyes searched my face again, but the medicine was dragging her under, and pain had stolen too much from her. She knew something was wrong. She didn’t have the strength to name it.
Good.
Let her sleep one more night with less truth in her mouth.
Her fingers curled into my shirt. “Stay.”
“I will stay.”
“Promise.”
My throat closed. There were promises I could not make now. Not honestly. Not when tomorrow I meant to break the thing that let her find me.
So I gave her the only truth I could.
“I am here tonight.”
Cassie was too tired to hear the difference. Or maybe she heard it and could not fight me for it yet. Her eyes closed. Her breathing slowed. The tension between her brows eased when I lay beside her and let her forehead rest against my chest.
The binding tried to settle us together.
I held her anyway. I held her because the magic might be corrupt, but her body was real.
Her breath was real. The bruises on her wrists were real.
The way she had reached for me while half asleep was real.
The fact that I loved her, even if love had grown inside poisoned soil, was real enough to kill me.
I didn’t want a life after this.
The truth came quietly.
No drama. No howl. No great noble declaration in the dark.
I simply could not picture waking in a world where Cassie lived free because I had cut myself out of her body and survived to become useful again.
I could not go back to Ronan’s side, stand behind his shoulder, and wait for the next order.
I could not return to being the pack weapon after learning that even the one place I thought I had been touched with tenderness had been built by enemies to control where I bit.
Maybe death should have frightened me.
It didn’t.
Tomorrow I would tear the binding open. I would use the last of myself to clear her path.
I would kill Silas for putting her in the circle, for setting Evelyn in front of me, for turning Ronan’s love into a blade and Cassie’s courage into a chain.
I would kill anyone who tried to stop her from leaving, council, guard, rival, friend.
Brother, if there was no other way.
Cassie slept against my chest, her hand over my heart as if she could keep it there by touch alone. I lowered my mouth to her hair.
“I am sorry,” I whispered.
She didn’t wake. That was mercy.
I watched Cassie and said goodbye without letting go.