Page 101 of The Devil In Blue
I sensed some pain in Lura, but Naeve only sighed, accepting the situation.
“Should we—”
“Leave us,” he said softly.
Naeve and Lura stepped toward each other and linked arms, walking calmly out of Rune’s bedroom. Our eyes remained locked together. My heart was racing too fast for me to breathe without a noticeable shudder. I was in awe of his beauty and for the first time ever, I felt like I’d seen him before. Long before. This fully magnificent creature with claw-tipped fingers, fangs, wings, and eyes that could burn right through me was suddenly familiar. He was so terrifyingly beautiful I thought my heart might fail.
“I’ve seen you before,” I whispered.
He took a step forward, never blinking. There was a tightness in his jaw like he was suppressing something. Passion and anger. Pain and regret. Mostly, he looked tortured. The feelings were all the same in the end. They were all destructive in their own ways.
But I longed for that destruction now. I longed forhimand all the ways he could abolish the bars I’d been trapped behind for fifteen years.
Break them,I pleaded silently.
But he didn’t. Not the way I’d hoped. Reaching toward his cluttered desk, he pulled out a folded piece of parchment and handed it to me. The heat in my core faded and I held my breath at the way he walked past me and kept his back turned.
I wanted to say something, but words were lost to me. Feeling let down, I opened the parchment to find a stained document with Lucien’s signature at the bottom. I skimmed over it and furrowed my brows.
“This is the deed to Aedon Heights,” I said. “And it’s… signed to me.”
“It’s yours,” Rune finally spoke. “All of it. If you decide to go back and live a life of your own, you can do it comfortably. He had assets that would support you for the rest of a mortal life.”
I turned around to see his folded wings and the back of his head. Why wasn’t he looking at me?
Too many thoughts were storming the gates of my self-control. The loss of important memories. The images and the pain that remained like ghosts on my body and mind from Southminster. The bitter taste of all the lies that they’d fed me was strong. The feeling of being incomplete. The warmth of the love I was starting to feel for the beast before me. The sickening idea that Lucien had been tainting my body long before I was in his care. Cuffs. Screaming. The overwhelming desire to die so many times. It all rushed back at me like a debris-filled flood, cutting, slicing, and bruising.
I was fae because the Devil in Blue made me fae. Because he loved me once. He’d given me wings and just as quickly, they were shorn. I was so unbelievably incomplete and wrecked that perhaps the king had finally come to terms with the idea that I was not his Briar. I was just… me. A ruined, ugly, broken creature made scrawny and sickly from the cages I’d been locked in for fifteen years.
Tears stung my eyes. My hands trembled and I wished he would turn around and face me. Face the biggest mistake he’d ever made.
I crumbled the paper in my hands. The sound made Rune turn. He eyed the deed first as I let it fall to my feet. Then his gaze met mine and he caught the moisture gathering there.
“You wish me to leave,” I said softly. He said nothing. His jaw clenched like he was wrestling back his voice. His silence was a spear to my heart. “To go back to the place that will haunt me until the day my eyes close for good.”
“You can sell the estate. Go anywhere you like,” he said flatly.
The notion made me shake with anger.
“I wasn’t talking about the estate,” I said through my teeth. “The whole world is my nightmare. All good memories were stripped and you will never know what that feels like. And now I know that I was not just lost. I was given away by someone you trusted. SomeoneIonce trusted.”
I stepped forward, shoving my hands against Rune’s solid chest. He stepped back as if my effort affected him, but I knew that was a lie.
“And now you tell me to leave,” I continued. “You tell me I can be free, but you know nothing about being free or caged.”
“Briar, stop,” he muttered.
My hand flew across his cheek, but he did not retaliate.
“They mutilated me,” I said. “They tortured me with words and whips and chains and ice. They raped me. Defiled me. Shamed me.” My fist connected with his chest. Once. Twice. “They stole me from you and you found me and now you are giving up!”
“I am not giving up!” he finally shouted, grabbing hold of my flailing wrists.
I tugged from his grip and moved toward the door, but when I tried to open it, I found we were locked in.
“Let me out,” I growled.
“I did not lock it.”
