Page 109 of Crown of Light and Ashes
Her eyes search mine, looking for something I'm not sure I can provide. Something frightening in its vulnerability, in its power to destroy me completely.
I love you, I think, the words forming in my mind with perfect clarity yet refusing to pass my lips.I love you, and it terrifies me more than anything has in centuries.
Instead of speaking the truth, I capture her mouth with mine, pouring every unspoken feeling into the kiss. She responds with equal fervor, her hands coming up to clutch at my shoulders as if she might fall without my support.
When we finally break apart, both breathing heavily, I rest my forehead against hers. "What is it,hatun?" I ask, sensing her turmoil through our bond despite her attempts to shield her emotions. "Something troubles you."
She pulls back slightly, her gaze guarded as she composes her next words carefully. "I was thinking about the children," she says.
"The orphans?" I ask, surprised by the change of subject. "Did you visit them again today?"
"No, I—" She hesitates, her hand rising unconsciously to rest on her stomach. "I was considering more generally. About children... and their fathers."
Something cold slithers down my spine at her words, at the small protective gesture of her hand. A suspicion begins to form, unwelcome and terrifying.
"What of them?" I ask, my voice suddenly hoarse.
"I was wondering..." She looks up at me, something vulnerableand hopeful in her expression. "How you felt about them. About the idea of... of having them. Someday."
The world seems to tilt beneath my feet as understanding crashes into me. Children. She's asking about children. Our children. A possibility I've never allowed myself to contemplate, not since—
Isil's face flashes before me, her joy when she told me she was carrying my child. The darkness that rose within me, the control I lost, the shadows that lashed out in panic. The terrible consequence of that instant of vulnerability.
Horror floods through me, my shadows responding before I manage to stop them, darkening violently as they whip around the room in agitation. I step back from her, desperate to put distance between us as memory overwhelms me.
"Kaan?" she questions, confusion and the beginnings of fear in her voice.
I try to respond, to explain that it's not her I fear, not our potential child, but myself, my capacity for destruction when faced with such vulnerability. But no words come, only a strangled sound of denial.
Her eyes widen as she misinterprets my reaction completely. Through our bond, I feel her sudden panic, her protective instinct flaring. She backs away, her hand still covering her stomach in a gesture that now seems unmistakable.
"I…I just remembered," she whispers, her voice strained as she edges toward the door. "I need to speak with Banu again. About tomorrow's...attire."
I reach for her, finally finding my voice. "Nesilhan, wait…"
But she's already slipping through the door, her movements fluid and quick as the assassin she was trained to be. I notice the shift in her expression—fear, disappointment, determination, but she's gone before I can explain, before I can tell her that my reaction has nothingto do with her and everything to do with the monster I fear still lurks inside me.
She thinks I would harm our child. She thinks I'm capable of hurting her.
And why wouldn't she? I've never shared the truth about Isil, about what happened. I've never explained why the idea of fatherhood fills me with such terror—not for the child, but for what I might do to it in an instant of weakness.
I've never revealed that I love her too much to risk destroying her as I destroyed Isil.
I turn to the obsidian mirror, my reflection a stranger staring back at me, a man caught between the monster he's cultivated and the vulnerability he's tried to deny. Behind that reflection, sits the crown I've had crafted for tomorrow's ceremony, waiting in its velvet box—the physical manifestation of a future I dared to imagine but was too afraid to fully embrace.
A future that now hangs by the thinnest of threads, all because I couldn't face my past.
I need to find her. Need to explain. Need to tell her everything, even the parts that might make her hate me again. Because if there's even the slightest chance that she is carrying our child—a child of both shadow and light, then that child deserves a father who is more than just a monster.
And she deserves to know the man beneath the shadows who has fallen hopelessly, irrevocably in love with her.
Chapter Thirty
Fracture
Nesilhan
MY HANDS TREMBLE as I gather my essentials, mind racing with the terrible knowledge that poisons every memory, every moment I've spent with Kaan. The horror in his eyes when he realized I might be pregnant—that momentary flash before his shadows violently darkened—replays in my mind on a merciless loop. I can't stay. Not one more night. Not one more hour.
