Page 41 of The Prince's Mage

“You’re the fool who fell for the decoy. In more ways than one. If you’d just captured Hypatia like you were supposed to, I would still be alive. I would never have known what your healer’s tables feel like. Least of all twice. Think of all the suffering I’ve endured because of you.”

He never stopped thinking about it.

“And that pitiful attempt to let me go when you realized I was the fake? Was it because you can’t help but fail or did you want to fail because you didn’t really want to let me go? Shouldn’t you have planned it out better? Cast some illusion of me in the camp or in the woods to lead your men astray? You were relieved to see I didn’t make it more than a few feet. Especially when I cast with two runes; when that happened… you had an excuse. An excuse to make sure I never got away from you again no matter how much suffering it would cost me.”

The leather bracelet on Gavril’s left wrist tightened.

“You deluded yourself into thinking you could somehow protect me. How can you protect me? You can’t even protect yourself. And you also can’t let me go. You bound me to you, and you—sick, weak, pathetic liar you are, you refuse to give me my freedom. You would rather I stay in this suffering with you than spare me it by giving me back to my people.”

“You said ‘stay.’ So I stayed,” Gavril whispered, but the pitiful excuse shattered the second it left his lips.

“You won’t free me fromyou,” she snarled. “You’re the problem. You failed to protect me from these tables, from your sick healers and your demented brother. My heart stopped. Idied.Youwere the thing I needed to be protected from. You’ve dragged me down with you into this nightmare. And I have spent months in agony even before this wretched table, but that’s what it took. I’m finally free. Now that I’m dead I’m finally free from you.”

“No—” his voice cracked, but she kept on.

“You’re the reason all of this has happened! Your failures. I’m dead because ofyou. Finally. Thankfully. I was dead the second you laid eyes on me. It was only a matter of how long you would drag me through this. You failed to put me out of my misery when I begged you to, so now I went to my death in agony. But at least it’s over. At least the healer ishonestwhen flaying me open to study me and my people’s vitae. At least I don’t have to continue pretending like you fawning over me doesn’t make me sick.”

Gavril shook his head. “I love you. Please, don’t—”

“Love me? If you loved me, wouldn’t you be honest with me? You studied me in secret. When you realized I didn’t know we were married, you kept that secret too. Why? Because you thought…what?That I could somehowforgiveyou for everything you’ve caused? That I could love the pathetic, weak excuse for a man who condemned me to this? Don’t you remember?”

Gavril’s hands were shaking. “Remember what?”

“I knew. I knew no matter what lies you spewed that I would end up back here. Because I knew that, I cursed you to lose everything you have ever loved. That every desire you have will be unattainable. I am what you desire, and I will never let you have me. You claim to love me. You are going to lose me.”

His hands fell away as he stared up at her.

“I could never love you. And because of you, I’m going to die. Again. Or worse. I’m going to keep living. And you’re never going to be able to keep me safe. I’ll end up back here.”

Then her eyes fluttered shut and she stilled again, her skin completely ashen and without color. She was gone.

And every word she said was true.

He was going to fail. He always failed.

* * *

“Gavril! Gavril, wake up!”

He jolted forward at the hand brushing his shoulder, opening his eyes in the dark room. The first thing he saw was Marcella kneeling beside his bed, her eyes red as her fingers were curled into the fabric gathered at his shoulder.

Her hand was shaking. Gavril quickly scrambled up, reaching for her shoulder and pulling her up onto the bed. He wrapped his arms around her, crushing her to himself, breathing out deeply when he felt her heartbeat. She wrapped her arms around him in return, and he felt the shake in them subside. He buried his head in her shoulder and murmured in her tongue, “Did I wake you?”

“Not from anything I didn’t want to be awakened from.”

He brushed a hand over her back, feeling the slight expansion of her lungs with every breath she took. He said, “The two of us… do we ever truly rest?”

She hummed noncommittally. Then she said, “At least we keep waking up.”

He thanked Asentai every day that Marcella woke up. He prayed every night to Asentai Marcella’s heart would keep beating. Every day he saw how exhausted she was, how much she was struggling to regain her strength, and it seemed no matter how much he tried to ensure she was taken care of, it didn’t seem to make a difference in her health.

He sighed, leaning back against his headboard and pulling her with him, and she shifted her head to his shoulder.

Marcella dozed more than she was awake while he and Aimilia worked. He was also exhausted, and it was making his mind sluggish; exactly what he didn’t need as he tried to find a way to prove his theory.

Over a month they’d been working on it; over a month Marcella’s recovery had been moving fractionally at best. It only made the ever-present guilt hanging over him heavier.

It was his fault.

---