Page 116 of Destroyer

He held it up to the moonlight and they gazed at it together, that strange misshapen stone. They had been through so much, the three of them.

Fen sighed, and his shoulders slumped almost imperceptibly. “It took me a while to understand. Far longer than it took you. Ever since that day, the day I became the Destroyer…” His mouth curved bitterly as he spoke the name. “I survived it. Just like you, I woke up blind, naked, in the center of a desolate crater. Even this rotten thing, beating away.” His hand pressed to his chest, his heart. “But from that day onward, I simply didn’t age. I never died. There was no explanation, no reason for it. I just… persisted, endlessly. It was a punishment. And all the while, I felt distinctly empty, as if something in me was missing, like something had been stolen from me in the moment of my cursed rebirth.”

“It’s more than you deserve,” said Ru, but her resolve had faltered.Just like you, I woke up… she pulled the collar of her coat up, her fingers shaking as she fastened it beneath her chin, blocking out some of the wind.

He turned to fix his dark gaze on her, those gray eyes that had once been so dear to her. “It is far more than I deserve,” he said. “But what punishment would be adequate for the Destroyer? What penance would you place upon me?”

She faltered. What penance would she place upon him, and, by extension, on herself? She had ended lives here, at this very spot. Living, breathing souls whose bright lights should not have been extinguished that day. The memory alone had been a punishment for Ru, an unending horror that laced her thoughts, sleeping and waking. But had it been enough?

Would it ever be enough?

Just like you.

“Whatever punishment you deserve,” she said finally, “is the same that should fall on me.”

Fen’s expression softened, and at that moment he looked almost like himself again. But Fen didn’t exist. He was Taryel, madman, Destroyer.

“I am your punishment,” he murmured. “In learning who I am, you’ve met yourself. And I ask you — why were we not destroyed along with the souls we cut down? Why shouldwehave survived when the laws of nature and morality would have sent me, sent you, to an eternity in the fiery abyss? Your actions were unplanned, a mistake, and yet… should that make a difference?” Once again that immortal sheen fell over his eyes, a wall between them. “In my loneliest hours,” he said, “I often thought,thisis hell. I’ve been here all along.”

Hot tears grazed down Ru’s cheeks, almost burning her frozen skin as they fell. He spoke of her as if she were like him, a monster, a murderer. She wanted to fight it, to believe that she was different. To remind him that her destruction had been a mistake, the artifact had called to her.Hisartifact had compelled her.

But she knew in her heart that it didn’t matter. The intent was irrelevant — they were the same.

As if reading her mind, he moved toward her, gaze sharp. He lifted a hand as if to touch her face, then let it drop. Fen would have dried her tears, would have embraced her. But he was Taryel now, distant and centuries-old, no longer hiding behind a mortal mask. “You hate me. I understand that. Let me at least solve this mystery for you, Ru. The artifact is my heart. My fossilized, blackened, ruined heart.”

His heart.

And while science could do nothing to explain it, while logic and physics held no sway over this revelation — a heart did beat in Fen’s chest, blood and muscle — yet there in his hand, shining smooth and black, was Taryel’s heart.

“The connection between us,” she breathed, clenching her hands at her sides to keep from reaching for the stone. She looked up at Fen, forcing herself to wrench her gaze from the artifact. “Why does the artifact speak to me? What bond do we share?”

He sighed, his gaze locked on Ru, searching. “That, I don’t know. We’re connected, you and I. Both of us bound to the artifact, my wretched heart. But why — I can’t guess. I’ve been looking for answers, reading every book I could find in the Tower… I’m still in the dark.”

“It called me here,” she said, her voice almost a whisper, but Fen seemed to hear.

“The stone?”

She nodded. “Before I arrived with the riders, all those weeks ago. I felt it. It wanted me. Itaskedme to touch it.”

His face cleared and Fen returned, warmth springing up in those grey eyes. “I felt you, too.Youcalled me here. I had no prior knowledge of the dig, only… a feeling. A knowing that I needed to come. And when I saw you there, naked and alone, I knew it was you who had called me.”

“Ru?” Gwyneth’s voice was muffled, wavering in the icy wind, a question —are you all right? Do you need us to intervene?

It was as if Gwyneth’s voice snapped Ru back to reality. She glanced over her shoulder at Gwyneth and Archie and shook her head slightly. Turning back to Fen she was struck by a deep chill, so bone-cold that she moved instinctually toward him, toward his body heat.

She shivered violently as a gust of wind rushed past, and Fen swept her toward him with his free hand, holding her close, steadying, just as he had done so many times before. As if it were instinct, a thoughtless gesture of protection.

Ru allowed herself for one brief moment to succumb to him. Fen, who didn’t exist. Fen, a man who had left her at the Tower… and had never come back. She closed her eyes against the pain of loss that washed through her, cutting at her like minuscule shards of glass inside her heart.

She melted against him, repeating his name, pressing her face into his shirt. A horrible, irrational desire swept over her. She felt as if her own ribs had been wrenched open to reveal a beating organ, her vulnerability, her own heart, too flimsy in its flesh and blood.

Her breaths and blood quickened, her skin heating as Fen’s arms enveloped her.

And somehow, helplessly, she felt that he was the only one who could knit her sinews back together. As if she wasn’t whole without him, as if her heart would forever bleed from the cuts he’d inflicted.

At that same moment, it became clear to Ru that these feelings, this yearning, was of her heart’s own making. The artifact’s pull, its incessant tug against her emotions, had nothing to do with it. What she shared with Fen now was honest, pure, and sharp.

Lifting her chin, she caught his dark gaze, just briefly enough to see her own desire reflected in his eyes. Standing up on her toes, curling cold fingers in his coat, she kissed him. He responded slowly, gently. Almost sweetly.

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