Page 92 of Thorns & Fire
‘I was trying to save you.’
‘Youdidsave me.And then you lied.Again and again, Bear Slayer.’Wren stood, putting distance between them, her arms wrapping around herself as if to hold the pieces of her heart together.She used the name pointedly, for in that moment, she wanted to hurt him, wanted to put the distance between them that he’d created when he’d thrown those words at her in the gardens.
‘You made me someone I’m not.’
‘There is no ‘always’ for people like us.’
‘It’s acurse, Embervale.’
‘How could you take that choice from me?Hide it from me?’she asked, her chest aching anew at the memories crashing back into her.
‘If you had been in my position...’Torj shook his head, his eyes lined with silver, as if he too could see their past unfurling before him.‘If you knew what it was like to watch the light leaving your eyes...If you knew you could stop it, prevent itfrom happening again...Tell me you wouldn’t make the same decision.’
Wren looked at him – really looked at him.At the man she loved, the man who had hurt her, the man who had tried to protect her in all the wrong ways.She saw the fear in his eyes, the regret, the love that still burned beneath it all.
‘I can’t,’ she croaked, her anger giving way to a deep, aching grief.‘You took that choice away from me.’
‘Wren...’Torj murmured, reaching for her again.‘I’m sorry.I’m so fucking sorry.’Still on his knees, the Warsword cradled her hands in his.‘Tell me how to fix this.Tell me how to make this right.I would do anything for you.’
‘I know.’Wren’s voice cracked again.‘But I don’t know how...how to move past this.’
‘Wren, please...’
Once again, she pulled her hands from his, letting her fingers drift to the scar at her throat, the wound he’d closed in those final moments of the war, her flesh searing beneath her own storm power at his guidance.‘I’m sorry...I’m so sorry,’he had murmured then.
Now, he said those words again, his hands empty in his lap, as though he didn’t know what to do without her touch.He looked younger in his devastation, in his pain.
Wren struggled to swallow the lump in her throat.‘I forgive you, Torj.I do.’The words surprised her as much as they did him, by the look on his face.‘But forgiveness doesn’t erase what happened.It doesn’t change that I can’t fathom why you lied.Why you hurt me so deeply...How can I trust you?You didn’t trust me.’
‘I understand,’ Torj said hoarsely.He bowed his head and stood, his shoulders caved in, despair lining his face.‘Where does this leave us, then?’
‘I don’t know.’Her voice was soft but steady.‘I know how you feel about me...’
She moved towards the door, pausing with her hand on the latch.Without turning back, she spoke one last time, her words hanging in the air between them like the remnants of their severed bond.
‘But it isn’t always enough, is it?’
CHAPTER 36
Torj
‘A Warsword must never break.A Warsword is the unyielding shield upon which the darkness crashes’
– The Warsword’s Way
‘IT ISN’T ALWAYSenough.’Wren’s words echoed long after she’d gone, becoming a chant in Torj’s mind that morphed into something darker:you’renot enough.
His room was too small to contain him and the grief that wracked his body.Torj desperately wanted to leave this place, this godsforsaken academy that had been the catalyst for so much brokenness.But it was a unique form of torture to be in love with – to besoul bondedto – the woman who no longer wanted you, the woman you were duty-bound to protect.
Torj couldn’t leave.Instead, he took to the corridors outside, pacing the length of the hall, his gaze constantly flicking to Wren’s door.Every tormented thing he’d ever felt surged to the surface, becoming poison in his blood.
You’re not enough.
An echo of storm magic thrummed in his chest, warring with him, threatening to split his scar open anew.For the briefest of seconds, he wished it would.Physical pain he could understand;his whole childhood had been governed by it.But this?This was a wound he couldn’t fathom.His body was full of fire, and he didn’t know how much longer he could take it—
A cloaked figure stopped outside Wren’s door, and Torj was there in an instant.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’he snarled in Darian Devereux’s face, shoving him roughly against the stone wall.
