Page 121 of Song of the Dark Wood

Conor cleared his throat and met her eyes. “I cannot do that again. I cannot look into the lifeless eyes of someone I care about and know that I am responsible for taking someone beautiful and kind from this world. I will not, Rowan. I am begging you not to let me. I am begging you to stay away. I’d rather live in a world and know you’re in it safe and far from me than live with the grief of truly losing you. Forever is a long time to mourn. It is a long time to carry the weight of your wrongs.”

“You can’t die?” Rowan asked, playing ignorant.

“I can, but I am very hard to kill.”

Rowan frowned, the truth finally dawning on her. “You can lose your power. Youarelosing your power.”

“I am. The blight grew from here and spread because I cannot hold back the souls who have crossedandkeep the forest alive. Beasts fill these woods because I can no longer keep every tortured soul and demon in the Underlands. Losing my power only makes it harder to resist you because if I drained you dry, I could regain control. It is yet another reason why you need to stay away from me, Rowan. Please. I’ll throw myself at your mercy and beg you to leave me because I cannot do that again.”

Rowan shook her head. “It can’t ever be about whatIwant, can it?”

“Rowan, you know well the cost of that. I already stole from you once, and we got away with it. I don’t know what would happen again. Are you willing to risk that this could all fall to Aeoife?”

Aeoife was the one pure thing in Rowan’s whole world. She didn’t want to admit that she and Conor had come to the end of the line. She’d have to act much sooner than she wanted to, and Conor did her the favor of reminding her exactly what she had to lose.

“You need to understand,” Conor started. “Before Lorna, I was different. Truly monstrous. I did not care for any of them. I held out as long as I could, but I killed them all. I used them all, and I didn’t feel bad about it. I wish I could say differently, but it’s the truth, Rowan. I was angry about the deal I made, and I took that anger out on the Maidens. It was cruel and horrible of me, but you ought to know who I am.”

“What changed?”

Conor shrugged. “I think I got old. I got tired. The monotony of it all—the endless cycle of it—got to me. When Lorna arrived, she was the first person to ever truly try to fight back. Other Maidens had run, but she fought back enough to startle me. She stabbed me the first night with a broken cider glass. She wanted to live enough that I started talking to her.”

“Am I just a replacement for her?” Rowan hated the jealousy in her voice.

Conor shook his head. “No, Rowan. You’re not. You have things in common with her, but you’re so much softer. So very different, and I never felt with her what I do with you. I swear.”

Rowan worried her lower lip between her teeth as he continued.

“At first, I was just fascinated, and I wanted to see what she would do, but over time it grew into more. It was the first time I realized I was capable of more than just taking, but the end result was the same as the rest. Still, I know that no matter how much I don’t want to be, I’m doomed to repeat the pattern.”

Rowan sighed. He’d clearly strengthened his restraint since he hadn’t killed Evelyn or Orla, and they’d been around him for nearly five years each. Still, Conor was telling the truth, and if he didn’t have the confidence in himself, there was no way for her to summon it for him. The only way forward—the only way to guarantee her and Aeoife’s safety—was to kill him. The only way forward was for the Mother to make a better deal with a new god of death.

They stood in silence—the longing in both of them reaching out toward the other across what felt like a cavern of space.

Rowan sighed, all the air rushing out of her as she made the decision. It felt like the walls of her heart were caving in on themselves.

She would do what she had to. She always knew she would need to, and she couldn’t pretend anymore that there was another option. The Mother told her. The Wolf told her. She needed to stop pretending there was another choice because the longer she did, the more likely it was that she’d be the one to die. She’d nearly died last night.

Beyond that, she’d promised Sarai that she’d find a way to break their world to make it more equitable for all of them and this might be the only way she could do that.

Rowan wasn’t sure if she could live with herself if she killed Conor. For her whole life, everything had been controlled, and for the first time, she wished she could opt out of making a decision and surrender her agency to someone else. She couldn’t help but wonder if it was easier to live with herself when she thought she had no choice.

Because the choice she knew she had to make at that moment was the one that would shatter her heart.

She’d tried to find a way for both of them to survive, but the fact remained—they were mutually destructive. There was no avoiding it. No postponing it. They’d passed the point of no return, and no matter what she felt for him, she owed it to herself to want more for her life than anyone else would.

It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Conor. She knew he didn’t want to hurt her. Felt it in her bones, in her heart, in the pulse that passed between them when they stood so close. She just knew that they were all bound by the magic that ruled their world, and as much as he wanted to fight it when the time came, he’d be powerless against it, even if it broke his heart.

So she made the choice to protect herself; to protect Aeoife. It wasn’t fair that no one else would do it, but she was used to life’s inequity. It was a brutal sacrifice, but she’d make it for Aeoife. She’d make it for herself, even if doing so broke her heart.

“Fine,” Rowan sighed. “But I want something first.”

Conor nodded. “Anything.”

The words almost froze in her mouth before she could get them out. Her heart ached miserably in her chest, so full of unspent love and dread she thought she might collapse.

She met Conor’s eyes and forced herself to speak. “Take me to bed one more time.”

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