Page 44 of The Stone Curse
“Okay.” She turns her head and sits forward so that her face is bathed in light, and I suck in a breath. The skin is puckered and swollen where the graynite sliced open her cheek.
“They’re not sure it will ever heal fully,” she says bitterly. “I’ll be scarred for life.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, so am I.”
She almost died because of toxin in the graynites talons. Her leg, which had been broken in two places, was still in a cast. Goyles heal fast, but leg bones aren’t meant to snap this way. Insides aren’t meant to spill out of torsos, but hers almost had.The graynite tried to rip her open. So much blood…so fucking much and Curi holding her together.
She sighs and sits back, casting her face in shadow once more. “You shouldn’t have come.” She turns away from me, as if she can’t bear for me to see her like this, and my stomach wrenches, twisting in pain because she’s hurting.
“I would have come sooner, but I didn’t want to push boundaries.”
“I’m glad you stayed away.”
I have to play it cool. I can’t let her know how much she means to me. I can’t let her know how much this…being here, seeing her, breathing the same air as her, matters to me. I can’t let her know I’m in love with her or I’ll lose her.
“I stayed away, yes, but…”
“But what?” she asks.
“It didn’t mean I wasn’t thinking about you every day.” I know as soon as I say the words that they reveal too much. “I mean, everyone was…thinking…about you. We’ve been worried. Nothing is the same without you.”Fucking shut up, Touron.
Shit, she’s looking at me now. Right at me with beautiful eyes that gleam like pearls in a face so filled with light and beauty that her scars are barely visible to me.
“Oh, Touron…” She closes her eyes. “Sweet, sweet Touron.”
Oh no…She knows…She sees it. Of course, she sees it. ”I’m not in love with you.”
Her smile is sad and bitter all at the same time. “You’re a terrible liar. You carry your heart on your sleeve, and it leaches into your aura so beautifully…All the colors, all the wonderful colors that any female would be honored to see. But not me. Still, you knew that, right? I bet Orix had words with you. Prepared you for what is to come.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way. We can still be together.” I sound desperately weak, and I hate it.
“Maybe…” she says. “Maybe if you were in love with me, but I wasn’t falling in love with you, then…maybe…”
My heart slams against my ribcage, once, twice, a third time as if it can’t believe what it’s hearing. “You…you’re falling for me?”
That smile again, filled with the aching longing of all the things she can’t have. “I am. But I don’t want to. Do you understand that? I don’t want any more pain, and if you love me, truly love me, then you’ll walk out of this room, and you’ll forget about me.”
“I can’t do that. I’m staying at the elite tower. Helping Cameron and?—”
“I’m not coming back,” she says. “I’ve filed for an honorable discharge. I’m done, Touron. So leave, and please, don’t ever come back.”
I want to argue, to make all the promises to never leave her, to love her forever. I want to insist that it will be different this time, with us, with me. But there is no escaping the truth of our natures. If an omega binds me with her scent, then I will be lost, and Selas…Selas will be broken again.
I won’t do that to her.
I can’t.
I love her too much to be the cause of her pain. “Thank you…Thank you for being my first. First love, first…Thank you.” I turn to the door and stop, my chest so tight I can hardly breathe. “I need you to know that if there was a way to turn off my nature, to be free of it completely, then I’d take it in a heartbeat just to be with you.”
“Goodbye, Touron.”
Her tone is thick with emotion, and it takes every ounce of will for me to walk out of the room. And as I close the door softly behind me, I hear her sobs, quiet and muffled, and for the first time in my life, I truly hate myself.
CHAPTER 15
ORIX
