Page 66 of Veiled Fate
Kiel snorted dismissively and waved his hand. “Of course you are. Nobody who wasn’t strong would have ever made it as far as you have, Jada. You sell yourself short on that front. But what you have yet to do is takeownershipof that strength. Of knowing that you can handle the burdens of other people and take them upon yourself so that they don’t have to.”
“But how?” I pleaded.
“Practice. Determination. And wanting to help others, even at the expense of yourself,” he said, adding the last bit in a whisper.
He lengthened his stride, moving faster again. The gap between us widened, and not just the physical one. Kiel was pulling back. I could all but feel it in his voice. I’d failed a critical test in his eyes, and the person he’d thought he saw in me was now overshadowed by someone else. Someone he didn’t like.
“I’m sorry,” I said for what felt like the millionth time. “I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t know if Iwantto do that. To be that sort of person.”
“None of us ever wants it,” he replied. “But that’s the hand Fate dealt us, and we must use it to the best of our abilities.”
“Easy for you to say,” I said bitterly, “you’ve had centuries to get used to the idea, to learn from mistakes and better yourself. I’ve had weeks, that’s it! I’m sorry I’m not up to your standards.”
It was unfair of me to yell at him. We both knew it. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t a glimmer of truth in what I said.
Kiel paused, looking back at me with hooded eyes. “You don’t need centuries to understand that what you did was wrong,” he said coldly. “All that’s needed is some common sense. But that’s not the worst of it.”
My lungs locked up. “What is?” I whispered.
“Youknewit was wrong when you were doing it,” he said. “And that is a very hard thing to forgive, indeed.”
He turned his back on me with a hurtful finality to our conversation and started walking again.
The gap between us had become an abyss. One I wasn’t sure would ever be bridged.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Iopened my mouth to call out to Kiel. To get him to stop, and talk to me, anything but walk away from me. From us.
Nothing but a croak came out, accompanied by a very strange trickling in my throat.
What the hell?
I reached up to touch my neck. My hands came away bloody.
“Urk.”
Every pain receptor in my body lit up in the span of a second. My legs gave way from under me, and I stumbled on the wet, muddy mountain trail, my bare feet slipping over the glistening rock.
Muscles went limp as I curled over myself involuntarily, the action helping to shield my body as I hit a tree and rolled around it, continuing the downward fall along the mountainside.
“Jada!” Kiel’s concerned shout came from the trail above, followed quickly by his thrashing as he made his way down the steep slope, chasing after me.
I tried to reach out, to grip the rocks or scraggly brushes or even grab a tree branch, but my hands weren’t responding. My left arm blazed with fresh torture, while my right went limp.
Kiel.
He was almost there, leaping in great bounds without any care for his safety. Something pointy and hard slammed into my back, bones crunching as I arched over it with a thunderous whip-crack, every joint in my body snapping. An agonized scream burbled up through the bloody remains of my neck.
It was happening again. Her power was trying to escape, to get free, and my body was paying the price as healed wounds came undone, the very fabric of my skin unstitching itself. If I could have, I would have vomited, but my stomach was open and bleeding. The damage Lycaonus had done to my throat was only the most recent.
“Jada,” Kiel gasped as he reached me, scooping me up in his arms before I could fall any farther down the slope.
I was nothing in his arms, a flower petal carried on a hurricane breeze. He held me close, scanning me with those same blue circles that had condemned me for the coward I was moments earlier.
“I—”
“Hush, don’t try to talk,” he said, carefully picking his way back up the slope, only stepping where he was confident his feet wouldn’t slip. “It’ll be okay. Just weather the storm, like last time, and you’ll recover. Fight it, Jada, fight the power, don’t let it escape.”
