Page 80 of Iridian

“No,”I cut him off. “No, no, no—justno.”

“I have to try,” he insisted.

“You don’t.”

“I have to.”

“Youreallydon’t!”

“I can’t live like this, damn it!” he said, and this time he shouted, too. It was like he put his hand inside my chest and pulled my heart out.

Closing his eyes, he let go of me and turned around with his hands on his head.

“I can’t…I can’t live like this. I will not shut them out—I won’t do it. And I can’t live with the weight of them on my shoulders.”

Goddess, it was like he was slicing me wide open with those words.

Tears in my eyes. I wrapped my arms around his waist from behind and hugged him, cheek against his shoulder blade. Fuck, I wanted to break something, make something disappear—preferably his pain. I wanted to take it somehow, pull it out of him, carry it in my own body so he didn’t have to suffer another second.

All of this was because of me. Because he’d wanted to save me. Because he couldn’t stand the idea of me being hurt, and now I was inthisposition. NowIhad to stand back and watch him potentiallykillhimself trying to set free these soldiers. These strangers that he’d tied himself to—for me.

Taland spun around between my arms and hugged me to his chest, kissed the top of my head and promised me that we were going to be okay, that he really didn’t think that he was going to die doing this. Maybe he’d be wounded, but it would not kill him. He’d recover, he said.

And after what felt like hours to me, I finally forced myself to come to terms with it.

This was Taland we were talking about. It was Taland, and if he said he couldn’t live with this burden, then he really couldn’t. If this was too much for him, then it really was too much—so much that it would have probably driven another man insane already. I had to suck it up and deal with it and stand by his side and make sure that he made it out alive no matter what.

He wasn’t alone, damn it—he hadmeand that meant something. That meant a great deal. I would not give up on him no matter what. I’d first give up on the whole damn world.

“I’ll be right here,” I said, both for his benefit and mine. “I’ll have the bracelet. I’ll use it. You will be fine.” I knew spells—I knew a lot of spells. Fourth degree ones, so powerful they camethisclose to healing death itself as if it were a disease. That bracelet was my superpower.

It would be perfectly fine. We’d make it out of this just as we made it out of everything else.

“We will,” Taland said, leaning back to look at my face, wipe the tears from my cheeks. No more of them were coming though. Old tears—and I wouldn’t cry again until we were on the other side of this. “I trust you, baby.”

“And I trust you.”

He smiled, kissed my lips gently. “When we’re done, we leave. We won’t get more than twenty-four hours before they find out the soldiers are gone.”

“Through the waterfall. We leave through the waterfall trail.” There was a trail that we hadn’t explored, but it led to the bigger waterfall pool down the mountain, and we’d take it from there.

“It’s a plan,” Taland said.

I kissed him with my everything, locked my arms around his neck and held him to me for a little while. A part of me thought this might be the last kiss we ever shared, but I drowned thatthought with all my strength because it was a liar. This was not our last kiss—not even close. We both knew it and that’s why we were smiling.

“We got this,” I said.

“We got this,” he said.

Then we let go and stepped back—and one of the soldiers standing in line behind us broke formation and started to walk down the mountain as fast as he could without running.

Chapter 20

Rosabel La Rouge

At first, I thought Taland had told him to help the others who were still arranging those leaves and rocks and sticks into a three-foot wide, complicated circle to enhance the spell Taland needed to perform.

But then even he turned and looked at the soldier who was still rushing down the mountain, and he disappeared from our sight within a minute.

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