“Don’t make me a victim,” I hissed. “I fought for you. Please, fight for me too. I spent ten years thinking you were dead, and I was broken inside. You don’t know what it did to me when I learned you were still alive—”
“You never should have known. I wish you didn’t know.”
I was stunned. “You can’t mean that.”
He wouldn’t look at me now. His downcast lashes fluttered as if holding back emotion, but his mouth was a firm, unyielding line. “I do. Fervently. I am not supposed to fall in love. No, I’m not allowed to. Loving you is the highest betrayal of my oath, and I have failed.”
I was choking. Drowning. A bottomless hole opened inside me, sucking every happy feeling inside it. He wished I still thought he was dead. He wished I was a thousand miles away.
I’d never been so thoroughly rejected, and my last boyfriend had stabbed me in the ribs.
“Kass—”
“No. Don’t call me that.”
I flinched.
“Kassian is dead,” he said in a gentler tone. “Remember that. He died with your father in that cabin so many years ago and was replaced by Vixor Rae. That’s all I should ever have been to you. Perhaps this is my fault.”
“I will never accept that Kassian is dead,” I hissed. “Never.”
He started to turn away.
“I love you,” I cried out.
My words, flung like a gauntlet into the space between us, hung like smoke in the silence that followed. Kassian’s chest rose and fell. He said nothing. Every second that he didn’t answer shattered another part of me inside.
“That’s it, then? You want me a thousand miles away from you?”
I silently begged him to say no and to tell me he was willing to run away to anywhere as long as he went with me.
“Yes,” he breathed.
My heart was ice, and it was cracking. Fissures spread across the sides like frosted bolts of lightning.
“You want me to find a husband?”
His jaw clenched. “Yes.”
The fissures in my ice-heart widened into chasms.
“Have children? Forget that Kassian ever existed, while you fight and die alone in this wretched existence?”
My heart was nearly in half now. I waited for the blow that would shatter it.
His voice was strangled as he answered me. “I want what is best for you. Someday, you’ll realize this was the right path. No matter how painful it feels now.”
The last bits of my heart splintered and broke, and a cold numbness seeped from the place where my heart had been and spread through my limbs in an icy wave. I felt detached from my body.
I left the beam and closed the gap between us. Kassian went still but didn’t move away. I moved forward until our faces were only centimeters apart. This close, I could feel his yearning like a living thing, sucking at me. He was resisting with all his will, but still, his gaze begged me.
“You can push me away, you can break my heart, you can tell me to leave,” I whispered. “You can forget me, Kassian, but I won’t forget you.”
“I will never forget you,” he said in answer. His breath brushed my lips and sent goose bumps across my skin.
I wanted to kiss him again more than I wanted anything in the world.
He touched my chin with his index finger, tipping my face up toward his. My heart thundered. My lungs dragged air raggedly through my throat.
He didn’t kiss me. He picked up my hand and placed something inside it. He closed my fingers into a fist around whatever he’d given me. I heard the crinkle of paper.
“Goodbye, Erie,” he said.
He stepped away first.
“I’ll dismiss the Sworn outside,” he said. “You’ll be able to leave without anyone stopping you. Get as far away from here as you can, Erie. Run, and don’t look back.”
“Kassian.” His name leaped from my lips before I could stop it.
He paused, his hand on the door.
“I love you.”
He left without saying anything at all.
I opened my hand and looked down. He’d left a single sheet of folded paper in my palm, one of the magic communication book papers, the same kind as the book Snow had given me. The magic—or technology—of the paper allowed the writer to communicate with whoever held the corresponding page. Write on the paper, and the words would appear on the page the other person possessed.
He wasn’t completely gone, then.
I could still write him.
He’d receive the words, although I didn’t know if he’d write me back. And it was only one paper.
Like he’d given me a gun with a single bullet inside.
Was this paper for my final goodbyes? For my curses of him? For any recants or regrets I might want to send him as a parting shot?
I sank to my knees as a terrible ache squeezed my throat shut and tears flooded my eyes.
~
When I could breathe again, I left the darkness of the barn to return to the woods. I moved as though I’d aged half a century in the last hour. My whole body ached, my heart worst of all. I felt as though I had nothing left in my chest but an aching wound.
No Sworn intercepted me this time. I made it to the tree line without incident, and the shadows enveloped me like the arms of old friends.
There can be no us, he’d said. There was never supposed to be an us.
The memory of his words sliced through me like a knife. I pressed a hand over my chest as if to stem the pain that flowed from me like blood as I looked for Dog in the darkness.
I barely had time to gasp when a dark shape dropped from the trees above and knocked me to the forest floor.
CHAPTER THREE
I KICKED WITH both legs as the shape tried to bend over me and heard a low grunt of pain. I rolled out of reach and scrambled to my feet to run. Was it a bandit? A Sworn? A villager who’d followed me into the forest, planning to kill me?
Whoever had come for me, they weren’t getting me without a fight.
Dog burst from the bushes, snarling. She leaped toward the attacker, giving me time to run.
I tripped on a root and fell again. Air whooshed from my lungs. I crawled arm over arm for the bushes.
Behind me, I heard a yelp. I jumped to my feet and turned, ready to defend my companion.
Warm, human hands grappled with me and dragged me back into the clearing. I fought, kicking and clawing where the person’s face should be. Dog’s still form lay on the ground a few feet away, limp.
I growled in fury and struck again.
A female voice hissed a curse as I landed a blow on my attacker’s throat.
My attacker was a woman.
She reeled, releasing me as she doubled over to cough, and I jumped up again. Switching tactics, I sprang at her instead of trying to run away.
“Wait—wait—” a woman’s voice came clearly in the night as my hands closed around her neck. “Red Rider! Wait!”
I knocked her down and pinned her in place with my knee on her chest and my hands pressing her wrists to the forest floor. My time spent learning defense and fighting with the trainer Kassian hired for me had taught me well.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
She knew my name. She couldn’t be a mere bandit or townsperson who’d spotted someone in the woods. She was someone else.