Page 129 of The Demon Tide

My gut clenches as the impassioned love in his eyes shears through my heart.

“Yvan,” I say, a quaver slipping into my voice. “I had to go back to Gardneria to survive the Vu Trin. And... I had to seek out Lukas Grey’s protection.”

His hand lowers to my shoulder as his fire shudders around me, through me. “I thought as much. I saw the wanted postings with your new name. I imagined it was some ruse.”

I swallow, my stomach clenching hard as a vise. “It wasn’t a ruse. We were Sealed.”

Yvan stills as his head gives an almost imperceptible tilt, nostrils flaring, and I know he’s scenting my roiling, agonized emotion.

“How Sealed?” he asks.

I swallow again, feeling like I’m about to launch into a sickening free fall. “Fully.”

The blaze in his eyes intensifies, his gaze narrowing. “Did he force you?”

I can’t answer him for a moment, and his fire gives a sudden, hard contraction inward, as if he’s reading everything in my eyes and my fire as a rancid sweep of heartache and grief and guilt sears through me with such strength I feel as if I’ll tear clear apart. And when it comes, his voice has an unmistakable edge to it.

“What happened, Elloren?”

“Vogel was closing in on me in Valgard,” I force out in a shredded voice. “At the same time that the Vu Trin and Ishkart assassins were moving in. Lukas and I needed a diversion to get out.”

I tell him of the Sealing ceremony. And the escape. Even though it rips my heart apart to do it.

I tell him everything.

Yvan is quiet for a long moment, his hand still clutching my shoulder as if frozen there, his fire now pulled into a tight, volcanic ball in his center, but his eyes burn. Remorse hollows me out as I take in the conflagration of pain in that gaze.

“Do you love him?” he asks tightly, his gaze searing.

I nod, devastated, as tears slide down my cheeks and I struggle to breathe. “Yvan,” I choke out, “I thought you weredead. And when I Sealed to Lukas, I made a choice. To align myself with him and survive and keep my power out of Vogel’s reach. I didn’t expect to grow to care for Lukas too.” Agony overtakes me as Valasca’s words fill my mind.

You will lose important things. You will lose and lose and lose one thing after another.

You will likely lose every last thing that’s precious to you.

“Yes,” I admit. “I love him.”

Yvan is quiet for an excruciating moment, and then I’ve the sense of his fire lashing out of his control, slashing clear through me and the walls of the room with complete devastation.

“Elloren.” His voice breaks around the word, his eyes molten and tensing with such fury and pain and jealousy and love that it’s almost too much to bear. “Iloveyou,” he says. “I will always love you.” His lips tremble, the fire in his eyes turning white-hot. “You made a choice to survive and keep hold of your power. That’s the choice I would have wanted you to make.”

Tears stream down my face as I take in his ravaged expression and incandescent eyes. “I love you too,” I tell him, breaking apart.

“I know you do.” His mouth tightens and he looks away, his fire aura spitting out bright flares of pain. He gives me a poignant look, his lips trembling into a slight, bitter smile. “I can scent your emotions, Elloren. I know everything you’re feeling.” We’re quiet again as his fire escapes his control to whip around me in a chaotic storm. His hand drops from my shoulder and he steps back, wings releasing, eyes glowing as his horns spiral up from his tousled hair and his pupils contract into vertical slits, the runes marked on his chest visible once more.

“I can’t hold a glamour around you right now,” he rasps out. “I just can’t.” His mouth twists with a misery so acute that it overrides my renewed shock at once more seeing him not only horned, but with Wyvern eyes.

“This was always bigger than us,” I whisper, my own voice splintering.

Yvan nods and looks at the ceiling, neck arching. He rakes his fingers through his crimson hair, his face slick with tears, his wing tips brushing the walls of the cramped room.

I take in his otherworldly beauty. The way the rune light makes the onyx feathers of his wings gleam. The hard planes of him.

My Icaral love.

Fresh tears come to my eyes and I struggle to swallow them back. “We’re two points of all the prophecies of all the lands,” I force out in a quavering voice. “This was bound to break our hearts.”

And Lukas’s heart too.

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