by Skye Horn
It was just like Kieran to see right through her trying to avoid a subject. His brows pulled close together as he surveyed her face, studying her expression. The pulse in Thea’s neck quickened, but she tried to keep her breathing steady as she said, “I’m going to open it the same way my father did—with dark magic.”
“Absolutely not,” Kieran growled, stepping close enough that she almost backed away—almost.
“You don’t get a say in this, Kieran.”
“You may not have been trying to kill yourself in that tub, but this? You’re going to get yourself killed for sure, or worse.” His voice was low and dangerous, and his eyes were ablaze with new emotion. It sparked something in Thea, something she hadn’t felt since before he’d left Ivandor. She didn’t want to feel it, though. She didn’t want to see the passion concerning her safety. Instead, she’d have much preferred for him to remain stoic and masked. “Thea, please.”
The sound of her name on his lips raised the hairs on the back of her neck, sending a chill of pleasure up her spine. He’d said her name when they’d first entered the room, but it hadn’t been like that. He sounded like himself again—almost like he cared, but she fought the urge to believe in that care. She fought it with every bit of her being, because if he cared, then she’d start feeling guilty again for things she didn’t deserve to feel guilty about.
“Stop doing that,” she said, lowering her eyes from his, faltering in her control.
“What?”
“Acting like what happens to me matters to you.”
Thea could feel his eyes like daggers through her soul, but she didn’t dare look up. The tightening in her chest hurt as much as the stinging behind her eyelids, but she blinked the emotions away. She wouldn’t let him make her cry, not again.
“I’m sorry, Thea.” The words surprised her enough to regain her attention but didn’t stop the growing ache within her.
“Being sorry doesn’t fix the damage you’ve done, but I don’t think I need to tell you that.” She said the words without faltering, and her eyes remained dry, but the pain in her chest only worsened. She wanted to tell him to leave, but she worried he would actually listen.
Everything about their situation was wrong. They were supposed to be happy and in love after they defeated her father. Even if there were still battles to come, love was supposed to conquer all. Unfortunately, it didn’t. Instead, all she felt was anger and betrayal as she stared at the man who over just a few months had transformed from friend, to lover, to stranger, in the wrong order. She didn’t know how she could have so many feelings for someone she hardly even recognized anymore.
Time ticked in slow motion as they stared at each other, guilt-ridden for different reasons, but Thea didn’t understand his guilt at all. He’d abandoned her. So why did he care so much about how she felt now? Why these bursts of emotions that conflicted with his words?
“Declan kissed me,” she blurted, not sure why those were the words that had formed on her lips, but realizing they’d been bubbling to the surface since they’d entered the room. She felt guilty, no matter how many times she told herself she didn’t need to, and perhaps her subconscious was trying to release that guilt. If so, it wasn’t doing an expert job.
Kieran had made it crystal-clear that he wanted nothing to do with her. He’d practically shoved her into Declan’s arms the last time they’d spoken, and yet, she waited for the emotions she believed she deserved to explode from him.
The expectation that formed in Thea’s head was nothing compared to the hurt that flashed so quickly across Kieran’s gaze that she nearly missed it. Her heart felt as if it had stopped beating completely as she searched for the memory of how to breathe.
“Oh,” was all he responded, tucking his emotions away somewhere she couldn’t reach.
“That’s all?” She frowned despite herself, blinking in surprise at the anticlimactic response.
“Did you kiss him back?”
The question made Thea pause, because she didn’t want to answer. Telling Kieran that Declan had kissed her had been one thing, but admitting to him she’d kissed him back was a lot more difficult for her to stomach.
Unfortunately, the lack of an answer was answer enough, because he responded, “Okay.”
Confusion was one of many emotions fluttering around in Thea’s stomach like an uncomfortable mob of butterflies. She hated the tension building between them and needed him to say something else, anything else.
“That doesn’t bother you?” she pressed, wondering why she wasn’t just letting the conversation die. He apparently wanted it to, but she was poking at him for a reaction that she might not even be able to handle. Anything would be better than this, though.
“Did you do it to bother me?” he asked.
Surprised again, Thea didn’t answer immediately. Sure, she’d had a few glasses of wine before the kiss—she could blame that, but would she be telling the truth? Everything inside her screamed to let herself believe that the reason she’d kissed Declan back was because she hadn’t been in her right mind, but she couldn’t listen to that screaming. All she could do was meet Kieran’s eyes and long to tell him the uncomfortable truth that she’d been suppressing even from herself.
This time, he waited for her answer.
“No.” Thea kept her voice as steady as possible, but she couldn’t hide her stinging eyes. “I kissed him back because I was sick of believing I could no longer feel anything.”
“Well, could you?” he asked.
He was a bomb with the seconds ticking away before explosion. She could either walk away now or continue to prod it until there was no turning back. So why wasn’t she walking away? Why couldn’t she just accept that he’d told her to move on and do it? He was acting as if the kiss didn’t bother him, so why was she letting it bother her?
Soulmate, the little voice in her head reminded, but she pushed it away with annoyance. She was growing to hate that word as much as she hated her guilty conscience. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him, but that didn’t change that she’d done it knowing it would hurt him. Her anger after the kiss had likely been more at herself than at Declan, but she’d taken it out on him—yet another thing for her to feel terrible about.
“I guess so,” Thea answered. Anger had not been the only emotion Thea had felt after the kiss. She’d also felt confusion, and if she had only been angry at Declan, things would make a lot more sense, but confusion meant there had been a conflict inside her. That conflict scared her.
Kieran didn’t reply, but she didn’t look away from him. He was hiding his emotions well, if he had any left, but she had to believe that somewhere deep down he cared that she’d kissed someone else. Somewhere deep inside, he still cared about her. At least, she hoped he did.
“You shouldn’t have left, Kieran.” Thea said the words slowly as the silence grew more uncomfortable. She shifted, her wings tightening against her back as she stared at him. Thick tension in the air made it difficult for Thea to think straight, and she knew she shouldn’t be telling him this at all, but she was done caring what she should or shouldn’t say. She needed to tell him for her own sake. Especially if they would be spending any amount of time together.
Her heart raced against her sternum, clear to both of their Fae senses, but there was no regaining control of her emotions now. She’d spilled her guts to him, and the silence was killing her.
“I know.” Kieran would no longer meet her eyes as he spoke, but the two words were enough to spark the hope Thea had suppressed beneath numbness. “But it’s too late now. You’re all but engaged to him.”
Thea bit back her response about Kieran being the one who broke things off with her, but she wondered if he was right. Did she really have any choice in the marriage to Declan? She’d told herself that she did, because that was what she wanted to hear. But wouldn’t refusing to marry him ruin the alliance with Gimmerwich? Declan seemed like a decent person, but Ismara was the one who held the actual power, and she’d made it cl
ear that she expected Thea to end things with Kieran. Thea imagined saying no to her would be a lot harder than saying no to Declan.
“This is why we can’t be together. You’d let the rest of the world burn if it meant being with me. And don’t try telling me you wouldn’t, because I’ve been fighting that part of myself for months. I know you would.” His voice trembled and the vulnerability that Thea saw in his gaze when he met her eyes again was enough to break her heart. He wasn’t wrong. She’d absolutely just been thinking about how she could get out of this engagement to be with him and contemplating what it would mean for her kingdom. However, she hadn’t let the world burn. She’d only wanted to change things—to fix the backwards laws written centuries before they even existed.
“We said we’d change things, Kieran.” Thea reached out to take his hand in hers, feeling his warm callused skin like a shock of electricity against her own. All thoughts of his words in the village seemed like years ago when they touched. He’d said some absolutely horrible things to push her away, but what did that matter if he didn’t really mean them? Empty words didn’t matter if they had a chance to be together again.
Soulmates seem toxic, she recalled Declan saying, but that didn’t change the way she felt about Kieran. Passion outweighed logic, and if there was a way to convince him they could be together, she would take it, no matter the cost.
That’s the problem, the rational voice reminded her, but her doubts blurred away underneath his torn expression.
“Maybe one day things will change, but right now, you need to do what is best for our kingdom.” Kieran let go of her hand with a frown tugging at the corner of his lips, and the current of connection between them snapped away once more. It left her feeling cold and numb—vulnerable to the pain she couldn’t stand feeling.
His words made sense, but they hurt. She wished this had been how their conversation had gone in the village, rather than the ugly words and anger they’d exchanged. She wished he’d stood there and told her he knew he shouldn’t have left, but that he was doing it for their kingdom. She wished a lot of things lately that would never actually happen.
A mixture of love and hate battled within her about what he was asking her to do. He’d decided to put their kingdom first, but he wasn’t the one who was being asked to marry someone else. They’d had a conversation months ago about marriage in Faerie differing from where she’d grown up—it was supposedly more permanent. That was why her mother had sent Thea away instead of leaving her father. And yet, Kieran wanted her to make the same decision now. Declan wasn’t Malachi. He hadn’t grown up believing in darkness, but that didn’t change the stakes of an arranged marriage. That didn’t change that she was being asked to give up a part of herself she could never get back.
So, she leaned in and kissed Kieran, because nothing in the world made more sense than that. Her life would change if she did what he was asking her to do. Marriage for a kingdom, rather than for love. That was what her life would come to. It both amazed and terrified her to think less than a year ago she’d been a completely different person, but the kiss took all of her terrified and confused thoughts away—at least for a moment.
Thea knew what she was doing was wrong. She shouldn’t be kissing Kieran when he was asking her to marry Declan. It wasn’t fair to either of them, but Thea decided she could act selfishly just this once, since they were all going to ask her to be selfless later.
The veil of numbness lifted as Kieran’s lips reacted to hers, and Thea let her guilt dissipate as she kissed the man she loved, needing to remember the taste of his tongue as her body ignited into flames of passion. All the anger she’d felt in the village morphed into animalistic need as he pressed her against the wall with a growl. The rough stone chilled her wings, but his body fumed as he pressed hard against her. She could feel the way his heart thrust against his chest. His lips devoured hers like a man starved of sustenance, but it felt right. Everything about it felt right.
Until he jerked himself away, tearing his lips from hers so forcefully that she cried out at the sudden disconnect. He ran frustrated fingers through his hair, his body trembling from his fingertips to his feathers as he said, “We can’t, Thea.”
His eyes ravaged her thin nightdress even as his voice pleaded with her. Thea recognized the longing in his gaze and wanted to return to his embrace. The warmth of his touch had snapped away so quickly that it left her shivering against the stone wall. Her world felt as if it might explode every single time they touched, and she wasn’t ready to give that up. She didn’t want to agree with him about being rational or letting go.
“You are my future queen, and I vowed to do whatever was necessary to protect you. That includes protecting you from me,” he said, shaking.
“That’s what you think you’re doing? You think you’re protecting me? You’re killing me, Kieran.”
“You nearly died protecting me before, Thea. I won’t let something like that happen again.”
“That isn’t your decision.” Thea’s words were sharp, but she saw the determination on his face. No matter what feelings that kiss had stirred between them, he’d made his decision and in turn, he’d made hers. One final trickle of hope that Kieran might change his mind seemed to dissipate from Thea as they watched each other, both shaking with the agony of the decisions they were faced with. She felt herself breaking beneath his gaze and a single tear trickled from the corner of her eye as the anger disappeared.
He moved to wipe the tear away, his own eyes glistening, but there was no more passion in his touch, only an aching emptiness that mirrored Thea’s.
“When Morrigan reappears, we need to be ready to stop her,” he murmured. “If we don’t, we will all be dead and none of this will have mattered. I will always love you, but that’s why I’m letting you go.”
It was the words Thea had needed to hear since the moment he’d left. She’d dreamt of him saying them to her, but this nightmare was one she’d never wake up from. He wanted to let her go, and if she had any self-respect left, she’d let him. She’d let him walk away knowing he still loved her.
“I am yours, and you are mine, forever,” Thea quoted. “Who knew forever could be so short?”
“Our forever was the happiest I’ve ever been.”
Thea swallowed back an earth-shattering sob at the back of her throat. She didn’t want to cry in front of him again. If she was being honest, she’d also been happiest with him, but had that happiness been worth this pain? How was she supposed to survive this? All she could do was nod, not trusting her voice.
With that thought, he leaned down and kissed her forehead, letting his lips linger just a moment on her skin. Thea wanted to reach for him and tell him to stay, but knew it was no use. When Kieran made up his mind about something, no one could change it. Plus, she couldn’t tell him he was wrong anymore. He’d told her he still loved her—something she’d needed to hear—and he’d told her they couldn’t be together because they needed Gimmerwich to aid Ivandor in this war.
Thea had become a pawn in a game she was sick of playing.
A knock on the door separated Thea and Kieran from each other as Amara stuck her head inside. Thea wiped her eyes clean of tears while Kieran looked up to meet his cousin’s eyes with the same mask he’d entered the room with. The only difference was that Thea now glimpsed the broken soul beneath. She knew the man she loved was still in there, hiding beneath this anger, but she could no longer reach out to him. It made her wonder if he’d ever open up to her again.
“Iris left to do more research,” Amara said, looking between Thea and Kieran. “She said she’ll meet us in Ivandor.”
“I have business to attend to anyway.” Kieran’s tone was steady, as if nothing had just happened, and Thea tried to remind herself that he wasn’t a stranger. He was still in there, and everything inside her wanted to save him from his anguish. He looked at her once more with no sign of the love or desire that had been present just moments ago and bowed. “Pri
ncess Thea, I will see you back in Ivandor.”
And then he was gone before Thea could think of a response.
“What—” Amara said, but Thea shook her head at her half-sister.
“Let him go.” Thea rubbed the back of her neck with a shaking hand and felt the familiar numbness creeping over her skin as she asked Amara to help her change back into her regular clothes. She knew they probably wanted her to keep resting, but she couldn’t. Sitting around and waiting for someone to take care of her made her feel even more sick to her stomach than she already felt.
Thea still tasted Kieran on her lips, and the familiar musk of pine and poppies lingered on her skin. She never wanted it to go away but knew that soon it too would be lost beneath the numbness that she needed to survive. Kieran was not the only one who had turned into a stranger, Thea realized as Amara pulled the corset laces tight. She tugged her leather boots up over her knees and felt naked without a dagger to slip inside them. Apparently no one had bothered to bring her weapons to this room.
“Are you okay?” Amara asked as Thea finished dressing. It was a surprising question from a girl who had not only attempted to kill her more than once but who had murdered someone she cared about.
“No, but we have a Goddess to save, which means I need your help.”
Thea looked at Amara, noticing the girl’s reaction to the word “we”, and then headed for the door, motioning for her to follow. If Kieran wanted Thea to move on with her life, then that was what she needed to do. It was something she’d probably never heal from, but like he’d said, if she didn’t do what was necessary, they could lose this war. They could all end up dead.
“How am I supposed to help?” Amara asked, following Thea out of the room as she headed for the courtyard.
“You’re going to teach me how to control dark magic.”
Chapter 19
“W-what?” Amara stammered, running to catch up with Thea as she marched through the quiet corridors. The room she’d been resting in was in the hospital wing, but Gimmerwich didn’t seem to have much use for it since she was the only patient.
