“This is your home.”
I shook my head, my heart twisting.
“This is your home.”
I had no home. I didn’t belong here. Devyn didn’t want me. Marcus certainly didn’t want me. I still had a brother somewhere north of here. Would he care, or would I only be in the way? Maybe he liked being the last child of the Lady of the Lake, the single power in the north, and my resurrection would not be welcome news.
It had all been for nothing. Giving up my home, my parents, my friends, my city… my life. It had been for nothing. Less than nothing.
“It hasn’t been for nothing.” Devyn’s voice was soft as he appeared in front of me, his chest a blur. Had I spoken out loud? I blinked and pushed him away as hard as I could.
“It’s fine. I don’t need you. I don’t need anyone.” I had always been alone, acting the part of the perfect daughter, the good student, the sweet bride-to-be. Pretending to be. Until he came along. That had been real. I left my entire life behind because it had been real.
“I hate you.”
His eyes met mine before he swung away. He lifted a palm to his forehead, pressing against it and screwing his eyes shut.
Then he was in front of me once more, his arms around me, whispering to me, the bond between us completely open. His emotions crashed into mine: heartbreak and hope, denial and determination, joy and defeat… It was a swirl that eddied me around, crashing through me, until I couldn’t tell which were his and which were mine. I was dizzy with it. I couldn’t do this anymore.
I pushed back, rejecting everything. I wanted no more of this.
“Stop, stop, Cass.” I was a swirling mass of sharp pieces, but his warmth surrounded me, melding all the little shards back together. His lips kissed away the wetness on my cheeks as he lifted my boneless body and carried me over to the chair by the fire. I felt raw and wanted to push him away.
He knelt before me, his eyes anguished at the sorry sight I presented.
“You are my home.”
“What?”
“You are my home.”
I didn’t even know what that meant, and I was too tired to care. I got to my feet, my legs taking a moment to feel solid beneath me.
He caught my hand, his fingers crushing mine.
“Please, let me explain,” he said. “I’ll explain.”
I looked down at him. What would be different this time? I was tired of this dance. So tired.
He looked at where his hand held mine so tightly that whiteness appeared around his grip. He loosened his hand and I pulled mine away.
“Okay.” I flopped back down in the chair.
“What?”
“I said, okay.”
I waited while he gathered his thoughts, struggling to explain to me why he kept pushing me away. I was pretty sure I knew why but until he said it, I couldn’t argue against his imbecilic reasoning.
“I know you came with me because of this thing between us,” he began, his eyes downcast, not meeting mine. Not a good sign. “I should never have kissed you, especially after that night, when I realised you really are her. I know I said I would try and fight for us once we got here… I had no right. Out here we are simply too… You must understand my position. I am an outcast, an oathbreaker. Besides which, the lady and the Griffin can’t be together. Not like that.”
“Stop.” I couldn’t listen to this. I placed my hands on either side of his head and forced him to look at me. His -brown eyes reflected the pulse of sadness that I could feel reverberating through him. His cheeks were still hollow from the poison that had racked him, his powerful frame thinner than I had ever seen it. Almost like the frame of the insipid boy who had waited in the background of my life. Waiting for a sign that I was who he hoped, that I was the woman he was born to protect.
“No, Cass. That I found you and brought you home is beyond my wildest dreams. To see you reunited with your family is all I have ever…” He paused to control the emotion leaking into his voice. “I can ask for no more than this.”
“Ask who? The gods,? Fate? Who is it you can’t ask more of? Ask me. I am the owner of my fate. I decide who I will be with. Who I love. Not the council, not the gods. Me. And I say that I want you.”
“They will never allow it.”
“Who is they?” I demanded. I had had enough of they and them, whoever they were.
“Society. Your brother.”
My brother. I had family here, a family who would want a say in my future. But it wasn’t my family who came and found me. It was Devyn.
“My family gave up on me,” I said. “You never did.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does. Is that not why you are outcast? Because you broke your oath in leaving my brother in order to come and find me?”
“You don’t understand.”
I could feel the wall building inside him, the one he constructed around himself and used to keep me distant.
“I do understand. You are the Griffin, a legacy from your father.”
“One he betrayed,” he said, his face forming in resolute lines.
“No, I don’t think so. My mother bound him to a promise. A promise to protect you at all costs. She caused him to betray his role as Griffin. He didn’t choose you over me. She did.”
He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again as the foundations of his world were rocked beneath him.
“That’s… Why would she do that?” he asked. The secret his father had kept all these years, the reason he had abandoned us, the single act Devyn had blamed him for
