Page 115 of Synodic

“There was no way to fix her or all that she had done, I only realized it too late. All her beautiful talk of the future had been for her, not for her people. Leones’ people.

“The day I confronted her, I asked her to take a walk with me to our favorite place on the mountain. It was my final effort for her to see the damage she caused, to remind her of our time in the sun, and convince her there was another way, that we would make it work.

“She took it as a sign that I had never loved or believed in her. That I had been lying all along. And right there in her anger, she confessed to killing her father in my ear. How she had been jealous that he saw me as more of his legacy than her.

“Seething with hatred and anger, I drew my blade on her. It shook in my hand. What was I going to do with it? Kill her?

“She’d been suspicious of me for quite some time and ordered her guards, my friends, to follow us, to lie in wait for her inevitable command. She had poisoned them against me, claiming I had killed her father.

“There were too many of them. She knew my abilities and had carefully outmatched me. She may as well have delivered each and every blow. Every slice I received was as if her own hand cut me open, and with each drop of my blood she betrayed every good memory, every time I told her I loved her, held her, made love to her. She shattered it all and I wanted to snap her neck for it. All of it.”

It all made sense now, what happened in the cave, how right before he snapped out of his poisonous hallucination he had wanted to kill me, thinking I was Fou, someone he had once loved.

Rowen took a long breath, exhaling with a finality that this would be the last time he’d let this memory hold power over him. He was going to see this through to the very end.

“She asked me one last time if I would change my mind, to stand by her side. One word and she would take me back. But I looked her in the eyes and denied her with my entire being. It had never been love at all.

“I saw it coming, didn’t even try to stop it as she plunged her blade into my heart. And as my flesh clenched around the knife held by her hand, she whispered a damning promise in my ear, worse than if she’d just killed me. ‘If you survive this, I will destroy anything you ever hold dear again. Because you couldn’t love me, I’ll make sure you never love again, and because you turned your back on your people, you will walk the land without your home, alone until you decide to return to my side.’

“As she cursed me, my second in command fell to the ground, sealing her promise in blood. She slowly pulled her dagger from my chest, looking like the small girl I had met in the kitchen, that same wicked smile upon her beautiful face. All it took was a nudge and she pushed me off the side of the cliff.”

My own heart hurt, tearing in on itself as if Aliphoura had planted her dagger in my chest. If she wasn’t dead, I’d kill her all over again.

“I wandered the forest bleeding for days, ready to die, accepting the part I played in her sick machinations. I had already given up when Takoda found me. He refused to let my body give out, but something else died in me that day. As I healed, I searched for Viltarran, only to remember I’d been cursed with never returning to the land of my mother. Fou had destroyed me in more ways than one with her dark power, a mastery she’d studied right beneath my nose.

“She locked me in a prison, one I’d have to carry with every step. Not willing to sacrifice anyone for the sake of my heart, I closed it off forever. Until the moment I saw you. Keeping my distance was the only thing I could do to keep myself from admitting I wanted you, but the very confession in itself put you in danger. Any whisper or admission she would hear, and she would come for you.

“If I were a better man, I would have left you right where I found you that first night. I should have turned and never looked back. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I found that I needed you, felt a little more alive when you were near.

“I was a glutton for punishment, needing to be by you, but never touch you, never tell you how I felt. If Fou ever found out about you, I knew she would kill you, and she almost did. I will never forgive myself for that, Keira. Never. I will carry that guilt with me the rest of my days.”

My heart ached for the burden of his guilt. We would both need to find a way to heal from all this pain together.

“I saw how much I was hurting you, and it killed me. I wanted to tell you so many times, tell you everything, take you in my arms and never let you go, but I couldn’t risk Fou ever catching wind of such a thing, couldn’t risk you opening your heart to me in any way. Even when I tried, I found I couldn’t consciously say her name.

“How I hated myself for finding you and potentially placing a death wish upon your head. Placed there by a woman who once had my love, shared my bed. I knew her eyes and ears were everywhere, but I could have never fathomed her curse was placed in the one possession from my old life, my mother’s necklace.”

The fury in his gaze blazed, and the heat coming off his body was palpable.

“By the spirits, Keira, I tried to deny you. The first time I touched you it nearly knocked me off my feet. I vowed I would never touch you again. But you kept showing up everywhere I went. I would be in the forest, walking, trying to get you out of my mind, when you would appear right before me. It was like you were taunting me, torturing me. It was then I realized it was too late for me to leave. We’d made our mark on each other, and I feared that no matter where I went, you would follow. I learned the truth of that the hard way on my scouting mission to Weir Falls. I never would have gone if I’d known you’d show up.”

I remembered back to the Falls, what he’d said to me after I accused him of being the one to show up unwelcomed.What if I told you, it was you appearing to me, disrupting my life?

I had point-blank laughed inhis face, but now I saw it for what it was.

The truth.

I thought he was the one tormenting me. Not the other way around. How backwards it all really was.

“You were right that day by the creek,” I said, finding and meeting his heavy gaze. “I would have never believed it, but you were right.” I was drawn to him. From the start. Subconsciously using my astral traveling abilities to be closer to him. It explained why I always appeared where he was: in the forest, in Weir Falls, in his bed.

His lips pulled into the mimic of a smile, but it was still pained and held the anguish of one last confession.

“The night of the fire, I knew she was behind it, I recognized the color of Caeryn’s uniform. When he pulled you through that dark tunnel, I knew exactly where he was taking you, just not how to get there. It didn’t stop me from trying, and eventually I came upon your bloodied footsteps turned to life and vegetation. You brought me back, Keira. You lead me home. To you.”

It was all out in the open now, the memory that plagued him and why he had tried so hard to keep it from me. Dreading any whisper would find its way back to Aliphoura. I remembered the shadow that fell across his face every time he recalled his own personal hell. And now I knew why.

Was that why our hearts knew each other? Because we had both been betrayed by the people we loved, the people we trusted most with our hearts. Me, by my parents and best friend, and him by his childhood friend turned lover—both of us finding refuge in the Wyn village.

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