CHAPTER 111: ONE HUNDRED & ELEVEN

Valka

He shut down.

Like the mechanics of a machine breaking down until it completely ceases function. It was slow, beginning from the hands that gripped my cheeks. He recoiled from me. Flinched. His violet eyes dulled and emptied out. His face smoothed to something carved out of stone. He backed away from me, chest heaving. And I saw him battle to with breathing, saw him battle with disbelief. And confusion. And denial. I saw him battle with the different stages of grief that existed. With the realization that she was here.

And then, the rage came.

It was ice. It was a storm. I thought I knew fear. But he heaved one breath, curled straight from ice, and everything in the bedroom shattered. The glass walls. The wood cracked. The marble splintered and broke. The ice was in my veins, so cold, it burned. The ceramics shattered. The glass frames around the portraits he’d drawn up for me exploded.

"You played me the fool," he said, another pained exhaling turning the air to frost, unsafe to even breathe in. But I couldn’t breathe. "You hid the truth from me. All this time..." Nostrils flare with fury so great, it crushed me in a fist. "You looked me in the eye and lied to me."

"I have never lied to you," I said, even if it hurt to speak. "It was my truth to share. And I didn’t know I could trust you with it. Or anyone. I’ve never even told my father--"

But it was like talking to a wall. The words rebounded off a wall of stone and fell to our feet in pieces. He clutched my shoulders, backing me up against the wall. And gods, I understood his rage. He had lost everything. He never told me about it, but I lived with his mate in my body. I had all of their memories together. All of that love shared, spent and lost. Her laugh, her scent, her warmth. Theirs. Ours.

Unbidden, unwanted, I shared glimpses of the despair he’d felt that drove him to several decades of madness and isolation, running through the wilds in search of something he could never find, faces he couldn’t remember. And the exact moment he had returned home, even if he was no longer himself. To shoulder the weight of a kingdom that needed him, even if he was no longer... alive. Not really.

It wasn’t just about the secrets. It was the realization that I knew everything. That I had always known, from the moment we met. That he’d been given another chance to be with the woman he would have moved and broken worlds for, and I hid that from him. I talked him through the grief. I was there for him, and I was such a horrible liar, white lies here and there when he asked questions, stripping him of his memories when he got too close to discovering the truth. I looked him in the eye and made a fool of him, like fate did. Again.

That’s not just betrayal to Lucien.

It was cosmic cruelty and I knew he would never forgive me for it.

"Is this what you wanted?" he asked, my spine hitting the wall. He forced a laugh, but it cracked halfway through. "Did you laugh at me? Mock me, perhaps?"

"That’s not--"

"What did you feel," he snarled, "every time you came back, knowing I could never turn you away? Every time you watched me fight myself just to stay away from you--from this--" He gestured between them, voice breaking on the word. "What did you feel when I failed? When I began to despise myself for it? Joke of the fucking century, am I?"

My throat closed. I wanted to explain that it was far from that. But I didn’t know what to say, didn’t know if there was even a way to explain my way out of it.

"You watched me," he breathed. "Watched me crawl back to you again and again, even if I didn’t understand why, knowing you held the truth. Knowing you could end it all and break me with a single word."

He pressed a hand to the wall beside my head, the tremor in his arm betraying the control he fought to keep. His breath teased mine."I never could read you. Could never understand you or what you were thinking. And it was fine. I didn’t have to understand you to care. Or want you." His lips brush mine lightly. He shakes with that terrible rage. "But I look at you now and realize you are a fucking stranger. You are a liar. A deceiver. You are cruel. And I was a fool for you."

"My life is at stake!" I cried. "It’s been hanging over me since I was a child, like a noose around my neck, knowing at some point, I would be gone. Replaced. I hated you both. Ilya. And you. Because even if I kept a leash on her, my world still revolved around you both. It didn’t matter where I ran, how I rebelled, this thing would always be greater than me! How was I to tell you, knowing you were still grieving, knowing you wouldn’t hesitate one moment to bring her back if you got the chance?"

His fingers loosened on my shoulder. Cup my cheek. His eyes are cold as death. "You made that decision yourself. You came here. You inserted yourself into my life. Time after time. And when it came down to it, you chose for me. You could have told me, could’ve let me choose, could’ve trusted me. The one you come back to because you have no one else. The one who has never hurt you, regardless of how much you’ve hurt me. The one who wanted to live, for you. But you didn’t. Not out of consideration for me. Nothing about your decision had a single thing to do with me. You were selfish. You liked the power you had over me. You loved watching me come undone, while you held my heart in your fist. And I hope it was worth it."

I blinked back the tears in my eyes. "W-what does that mean?"

He pulled away from me. Emotionally. Physically. "I want you gone by morning. Don’t come back."

The lurch was desperate. The grasp of my fingers around his arm. His decision was the best thing for me. If I never saw him again, Ilya would eventually quieten. And perhaps, one day, she’d be completely gone. His decision to throw me out would help me way more than it would harm me. But I couldn’t take it. Not now. Not when I was already breaking and he was the only thing holding me together.

I clutched his sleeve tightly, tears rolling down my cheeks. "You said this was our home."

He wrenches his arm free. "Not anymore."

"Lucien, please." The ache in my skull, my heart, it ricocheted. But he didn’t stop. He’d turned his back on me. He was going to leave, and I was never going to see him again. I gasped at the ache spreading in my chest, robbing me of breath. The thudding in my skull amplified.

And I felt the familiar warmth drooping down my nose, only to my blouse. My vision doubled.

Lucien whirled then. His cold facade cracked, just as the ground rose up. His eyes widened as I fell and he ran for me. "Shit, Lyra."

He didn’t catch me in time. My head slammed hard against the wood and I felt something crack.