Page 97 of Her Cruel Redemption

I muttered a few vicious curses as I spied my clothes laid out near the fire, covering up my feeling of intense vulnerability with profanity. What the fuck had he been thinking? Stripping me naked. Caring for me while I was sick. Jumping into the ocean when I’d fallen. And he said we were still in Port Howl. What was left of his fleet would surely be gone by now. He’d given up his escape in jumping in after me. He’d be torn apart by anyone who caught him here. Why would he have done this? What was I supposed to do now that he had? How could I keep myself safe from him when he was dismantling so many of my beliefs about his motives and his intentions? That hazy half-conversation swum back to me, the one that seemed part dream. When I’d accused him of being in love with me.

I think you’ve known that for a while.

By the time I’d crawled out of the nest and struggled into my salt-streaked clothes, I was burning with something. Some sort of snarled agony of fury and hatred and anguish and gratitude and bitterness for having to feel it all. Look what he haddone to me. My hatred of him had twisted me up so tightly with the need to destroy him that I’d let it almost destroy me. Flashes of the harbour tore through my mind, of magic burning through my body, of flinging a hand out to strike, of hittingGorasand sending him flying. I had become a monster.Hehad turned me into a monster. How could Draven have brought me here? How could he have risked so much when he had done such terrible things? How could he have started a war and used me and lied to me and compelled me andlet me be burned aliveonly to turn around and keep saving my life? How could he admit thathe was in love with me? And how could I—

‘How are you feeling?’ The words split a stillness I had been filling with my own gasping breaths as I stood doubled over, hands wrapped around my stomach in a fit of some kind of emotional spiral. And they belonged to a voice that made me wild. He was in a deeper part of the cavern, where a tunnel snaked off into the dark, watching me with an expression I couldn’t read, a water flask held in one hand. He seemed to be paused on the stony threshold, like he had been about to approach but now wasn’t sure if he should come in.

I straightened up. Crossed the cave. Placed my hands on his chest. Pushed him. Hard. He staggered backwards, arms going out to fend me off. The flask crashed to the floor, splashing my calves and spilling water onto the sand.

‘Howdareyou,’ I snarled, pushing him again, tears blurring my vision. ‘Howdareyou do something as heinous as you did. Howdareyou make it impossible to forgive you and then do this. How fuckingdareyou jump in after me.’ I was pounding his chest, tears spilling down my cheeks now, hot and furious. Because this was worse than all of it. Worse than the lies and the betrayals, worse than the terrible things he’d done. This waswrong. Hewas wrong.Hewas supposed to be the monster. A liar. A user. The man who had destroyed me, who had taken me and twisted me and left me with nothing but the ruins of myself.

He gripped my shoulders, trying to hold me off. ‘What was I supposed to do, let you drown?’

My hand met his cheek with a sharpcrack!

‘Yes!’ I shrieked. ‘You were fine with letting me burn, so you should have let me drown! You had no right to go jumping in after me. No right! Just as you had no right to compel me to stop!’

He managed to lock his arms around my shoulders, pulling me in tight. My blows lost their force as I gave myself over to sobbing, my fingers curling in his shirt like I wanted to hold on and push him away at once.

‘I know,’ he murmured. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You have no right to be anywhere near me after what you’ve done to me,’ I cried. ‘I should beallowedto hate you. Left in peace to hate you. But you just keep coming. You just keep pushing. You won’t even let me have my hatred.’ My shoulders shuddered with my gasping, and he just kept saying he was sorry, over and over again, his voice hoarse, cracked through and wavering, and in this tangled, messy, fucked up embrace we sank to the floor. He cradled me to him, rocking me back and forth as I wept out everything that had been building since I saw him again at the crossing of the Cro. It poured out of me, and he held it all, unflinching as I called him every foul, dirty, insulting thing I could think of. Because this didn’t change anything. Itcouldn’tchange anything. Because if I let myself believe—even for a second—that there was something in him that cared, something real and raw beneath all the ruthlessness, then where did that leave me? If I let this crack the walls I’d built, then everything would spill out—the regret, the fury, the grief, and the part of me that still,still,wanted to reach for him.

He didn’t get to make me hate him and then make me doubt it.

I accused him of every depraved act I could name. Laid responsibility for every wrong done to me since the moment I’d met him at his feet. It would have been better if he’d arced up, fought back, defended himself. It would have been easier. But his solemn vigil was impossible to rail against forever. With nothing more to feed it, my rage was eventually spent. My tears stopped, leaving behind eyes puffy and swollen, cheeks crusted with salt. I felt limp. Hollowed out. Cavernously empty, my insides a deep chasm still echoing with those words he kept saying.I’msorry. As if that made it better. As if that made it okay.

‘You like to break things,’ I said finally, my voice thick and wavering. ‘Consider me broken. Be satisfied with that and leave me alone.’

He didn’t respond for a long time. When he finally did, it was as a murmur into my hair.

‘You aren’t broken,’ he said. ‘Fierce, formidable, beautiful thing. You could never be broken by the likes of me.’

I took a deep, shuddering breath. Scrubbed my eyes. Slammed the door on the gaping pit of pain that had been busted open to bleed all through my chest. Drew away from him. ‘What now?’ I asked. ‘Do we have some kind of final showdown here under Port Howl? Do we kill each other?’ My attempt at flippancy missed the mark. My voice was too tender and raw to carry the pretence that the idea did anything other than ruin me.

He released a bitter snort of laughter. ‘Just give me a few minutes to find my knives.’

‘I don’t know why that’s funny.’

‘If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t have saved you. I’m many things, my dear, but fickle isn’t one of them.’

I considered him. That haunted, hungry look was in his eyes again. He was looking at me like I might be his deliverance or his damnation and he hadn’t decided which. ‘No, you’re not, are you?’ I shuffled back further. Considered whether I could kill him. My magic felt like a whisper in my veins, so distant and inaccessible, and even reaching for it made my stomach churn. If I wanted to strike him, I wasn’t sure I even could. ‘Will you let me leave?’

‘I won’t stop you,’ he said. ‘But I’d prefer it if you’d stay. At least… for a while.’

I drew my knees to my chest and hugged them close, like I was erecting a wall between us. ‘And do what, Draven? Live in these tunnels? Pretend we’re different people while the world is torn down above us because of a war that you started?’

‘Yes.’

That pulled me up short. ‘You’d lose whatever revenge you’ve been chasing.’

‘I suppose I’ve lost the taste for it.’

‘I’m so glad my life was upended for something that meant so little to you.’

He didn’t flinch. Just kept watching me with those haunted eyes. ‘It was my entire purpose. My entire existence. I never would have thought you’d matter so much more to me than that. But you do.’

I wanted to cry again. Would have, if I had any tears left in me. Maybe if I could, I would have been able to ease this throbbing ache in my chest, like something was burning me from the inside out, smouldering away just hot enough to keep my heart perpetually charred and unable to heal.

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