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“I would not have that happen to you for anything,” he says again, each word a rock under my trembling feet. “I’m so sorry.” He swallows, the sound small but steady. “If you allow me, I’ll tell you everything now.”
His offer hangs in the steam-heavy air between us—an offering of truth, of reckoning.
My chest still stabs with fear, but the safety in his arms steadies me enough to nod.
I need to hear it from him.
I need the raw map of what he did and what he feels and what old ghosts still haunt him.
If we’re to keep building whatever this is, there’s no more sheltering—not from him, not from me.
“Tell me,” I whisper, and my voice trembles but holds.
The sea murmurs beyond the walls as if listening.
I don’t think I want to hear it.
The old woman’s cackle echoes in my head like splinters.
The image of her shoving me on the slick dock still prickles along my skin.
But something else—an insistence that has nothing to do with pride and everything to do with the bond threading tighter between us—makes me shift.
I push up from where I’ve been curled against him until I’m sitting, knees bent, heart hammering.
I force myself to face him.
Kael doesn’t resist.
He mirrors me, lowering his broad hands into his lap as though to keep them from reaching for me, from shielding me from the weight of what he’s about to say.
His restraint unnerves me almost as much as his stormy eyes do.
The bond thrums like a taut string, glowing between us, tugging at my chest. His need for me hums through it—steady, insistent, like a lighthouse sweeping a storm-dark sea.
It steadies me, even as it threatens to break me.
I nod, throat tight.
I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.
Somehow, the truth feels safer from his lips, even if it hurts, than from rumors whispered by frightened mouths or spat like venom from bitter ones.
“Tell me,” I whisper.
The word trembles out of me, both a surrender and a demand.
He drags in a breath, long and heavy, as if gathering centuries of weight into his chest before he lets it out again.
His eyes stay locked on mine.
“I will tell you all of it, Telya. But you must save your questions until I am finished, yes?”
The formality of his tone rattles me. I nod anyway, my palms damp against my thighs.
“Yes.”
He watches me a beat, then he dips his chin—his acknowledgement we’ve agreed.
