Page 137 of A Promise so Bold and Broken

Loche slammed his fist against the wall, and the cracking of the stone fractured something within her even before she met his broken gaze. “I should have realized you’d be too damn noble!”

Stalking up to her, he ignored the warning rumbling in Merrick’s chest. “Do you not think I know what Rioner has planned? I might not remember what memories you took away from me, but if I loved you and you loved me… you must have known me better than that.”

Her mouth fell open when Loche dragged his hands down his face, and an emotion she’d never seen him carry before flitted across his features.

Guilt.

Raw guilt.

“I risked everything for you,” he said, emphasizing each word. “My land. My people. For you. And even now… even when I don’t feel what I know I felt, when I don’t remember… I can’t. I can’t sacrifice you.”

“Sacrifice…” Lessia threw out her hands. “I have no idea what you’re talking about! Why are you risking anything for me?”

Merrick let out a choked sound, and she stumbled back when she met his dark eyes.

Wide dark eyes.

In a face white as a sheet.

“He just figured it out.” Loche eyed the hand he’d struck the wall with, wiping the trickles of blood running down his knuckles off on his trousers.

“Merrick?” she demanded.

Lessia met Raine’s and Kerym’s eyes over Merrick’s shoulder when the Fae remained quiet, his jaw clenching so hard she wondered if he was about to crush his teeth.

They looked as confused as she felt, wrinkles lining their foreheads as they stared from the regent to the frozen Death Whisperer.

“What is going on?” Lessia whipped her gaze from Loche to Merrick, and when still neither deigned to respond, she stepped into Merrick’s space and waved her hand before his glassy eyes.

“Merrick, you’re scaring me,” she told him shakily.

His eyes finally focused, finding hers as he lifted them.

But when his hands landed on her shoulders and he clasped them in a way that made her feel as if he never wanted to let go, pure, undiluted dread roiled within her.

“The curse isn’t about Loche,” Merrick said in a monotone.

ChapterThirty-Four

Lessia blinked as her eyes left the swirling dark ones before her.

She blinked again as hard gray ones found hers.

And again when first hazel ones, then blue ones, met hers, only to quickly glance down at the dirty wooden floor.

“If… if it’s not about Loche,” she said slowly, unwilling to let the thought touching the border of her consciousness become clear. “Then who?”

The hands on her shoulders pulled her closer to a body, one of them dropping and another wrapping around her waist, pressing her against quivering muscles as if to protect her from the outside world.

“The one that’s loved by Fae and human.”

Lessia’s eyes met those gray ones again, and she must have only blankly stared at him because Loche repeated himself. “The one destined to take down Rioner is the reluctant ally, the one loved by Fae and human.”

“Yes… loved by someone like me? A half-Fae, half-human.” Lessia frowned as she stared at the group. “The reluctant ally… Like all recent regents in Ellow, Loche has honored the allyship with Vastala.”

“I’m not a reluctant ally, Lessia.” Loche sighed as he flung a glance outside the window. “Iwanteda closer partnership with the Fae. I wanted us to work together. I wanted peace. I wanted… not this.”

Merrick’s hand around her waist clenched and unclenched as Raine mumbled, “Rioner misunderstood the curse.”

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