Perhaps I’ve earned it.
Perhaps my behavior has been bad enough to have put her trust completely out of my grasp. Perhaps there’s nothing I can do but accept it.
“We’ll both be better off for it,” I say, my last attempt. “I know the fire burning in you. I see it pushing you toward whatever end you’re after. I see it and I know it because I feel it, too. There is nothing, nothing in this entire universe that matters more to me than regaining the life I lost, and I know you feel the same about whatever it is you seek here. Let me help you, Roslyn.”
More silence, more inscrutable hesitation
Roslyn turns away from me, shoulders heaving in a deep breath as she runs a hand through her hair, mussing the damp strands, and the last of my hope dies a swift death.
My heart falls, disappointment presses bitter and defeated on my shoulders, and I shake my head in resignation.
“I suppose we’re done here, then. I’ll tell the producers we’ve ended our relationship, and we can both—”
“Fine!” she snaps, rounding on me. “Fine. I’ll tell you.”
Devastation, in those beautiful green eyes of hers. Devastation and defeat, a brokenness that fills me with shame knowing I’m the one who put it there.
It shouldn’t matter to me at all.
This is what I wanted.
Her surrender.
Her honesty.
To finally know the secret she’s been keeping, to know what exactly it is in the Eritin wilderness that’s calling to her.
Only now that I’m about to get it, I’m filled with soul-deep revulsion.
Not at her. At myself.
Thick and oily, that revulsion settles itself into the bottom of my stomach, creeps up the back of my throat until I want to retch around it.
But before I can take it back, tell her to keep whatever it is she’s about to say inside, Roslyn draws herself to her full height. Her chest heaves once, twice, and her voice is tight and hoarse when she works up her courage enough to speak.
“I’m here to find my sister.”
15
Roslyn
“I’m here to find my sister.”
Breath rasps in and out of the vise-tight hold panic still has around my chest. My hands shake, and I ball them into fists at my sides so Zandrel won’t see. My nails bite into my palms, a slight shock of pain that lets in just enough sanity for the weight of what I said to crash over me.
Oh, god. What have I done?
“Your sister,” Zandrel says slowly, weighing the words like the scales of judgment.
If only I could guess which way they’ll tip.
Maybe he won’t believe me.
Or maybe he will.
I don’t know which is worse.
I don’t know which will get me closer to Savvie and which might put her in even more jeopardy.