Page 136 of Possess Me at Midnight
Ice
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Once the others leave the room, Sabelle saunters around the table. Warily, I watch her approach, torn between my need to grab her and pull her against me and my honor, which screams at me to leave her to a better future.
As she nears, I force myself to step back.
“You can’t avoid me forever.”
Her words shame me. Bloody hell, I’m mucking everything up. “Of course. It’s cowardly, and I’m sorry. You should know… I’ll never blame you for Renouncing me.”
“You daft, stubborn man.” She stomps closer. “I’m trying to Bind myself to you.”
Regret plows through me. Releasing her is both the most honorable and most difficult thing I’ve ever done. “Sabelle… Princess, no. I?—”
“Just don’t know when to shut up, do you? I don’t want to Bind myself to you out of pity or spite against my brother. Not for politics or any other nonsense you might dream up. I want to be with you because I love you. And I know you love me.”
I shuffle one foot against the stone floor. Love her? A fucking understatement. She’s my whole world. For the sake of her future, I’ll leave her to a better life without me. “I don’t deserve you.”
“Because you failed to kill Mathias?” At my nod, she rolls her eyes. “That’s rubbish. I told you, no one expected you to kill the bastard.”
I did. I clench my fists at my sides. I not only expected to kill Mathias, I demanded it of myself. The moment I realized how to defeat Mathias in the challenge ring, I tasked myself with killing the nemesis who ruined my life and shattered my hope of a future two centuries ago. Defeat was a bitter pill to swallow. It still is.
But it will damn near kill me to hear her Renounce me for good.
Something invisible crawls into my chest, closes up my throat. My eyes sting. I don’t dare lift my gaze to Sabelle. I clamp my jaw shut, but my brows still slash down, my face contorts. Tears well, threatening to unman me even more.
“I expected it!” I roar, pounding my chest. “He deserved to die for what he did to Gailene, and I vowed to kill him myself. When I had the chance, I was too slow, too weak?—”
“And too damn insistent on being a one-man army. He’s evil in a way you can’t grasp. But your refusal to embrace a future with me isn’t about the fact Mathias is still alive.”
“It is. I failed you—and all magickind. By god, witch, don’t you understand that?”
Sabelle reaches a tentative hand to me. I try to steel myself against her sweet touch, but when she lays her palm on my shoulder, heat bombards me. I jerk, wince…but can’t bring myself to pull away.
“You think you failed Gailene. You’ve spent two hundred years living for the express purpose of killing the wizard responsible, thinking it would put her memory to rest. But if Gailene had seen that challenge, she would never have thought that you failed. You’re a great warrior. And now a Council member who can affect real and necessary change within magickind. You’re also a talented wizard and a good man—one I don’t want to live without. She would be proud.”
My face crumples, and my throat seizes up completely. Desperately, I press my lips together, determined to trap in the sobs echoing in my head inside.
But it’s no use. I can’t stop bawling. With that, fury sets in. “I couldn’t save her, and I couldn’t put down the motherfucker who killed her. Two hundred years, Sabelle. Two centuries of living for nothing but revenge, and I still couldn’t do the one thing that mattered. How on earth could you ever trust me to save you if you needed me?” I grab her face, past caring if she sees me cry, and will her to understand. “Sabelle, I would never ask you to put yourself in my hands, under my protection?—”
“Stop! Don’t you dare think for me. I’ve had plenty of that from Bram. I don’t need it from you as well.”
Her anger, her very words, silence me. I never meant to treat her like her brother does, to manipulate her into my way of thinking. But I did just that.
“Listen to me, Isdernus Rykard. There’s no man I would rather be with. I didn’t ask you to save me, though there’s no one I believe could more than you. I asked you to love me. And if Gailene were here today, she would never want you to give up your life to pursue hatred and revenge. She would merely insist that you follow your heart.”
The sweet, wise, pushy witch is right. Utterly. But does that change anything?
My shoulders shake as more sobs wrack my body. “Gailene b-begged me to save her. As Mathias and the Anarki were slowly killing her, she begged me to rescue her. And I didn’t.”
“You had no notion what was happening to her, and even if you had, if you’d tried to save her alone, Mathias would only have killed you, too.” Sabelle wraps her arms around me and holds tight.
It’s selfish, but I pause to bask in the warmth of her touch, of her love. How can I live without her tenderness for the rest of my centuries? I’ve never wanted—needed—anyone more. But reality intrudes, and I must face it.
“At least I would have died with honor. As it is, I wonder if fate let me live simply so I could feel the weight of my failure. Why else was sweet Gailene taken from this earth while I was left behind?”
“To fight another day. You lived because Gailene would have wanted it. You lived because you didn’t fail her and because Mathias escaping the challenge didn’t mean you failed her again; it meant you stayed alive, won the battle and the Council seat, and you’ll live to fight in the war ahead. If you’re willing to let go of the past and embrace the future.”
