Page 60 of The Lands Defying
I shake my head, feeling a slight tremble in my fingers like I’m still holding that fucking whip.
“What did she say after she found you in the basement?” he finally dares to ask, like he didn’t want her to find me. Fucker.
I sigh, banging my head against the stone as I look up at the cave walls. We hadn’t spoken about anything that had happened after that, and I get the feeling he didn’t want to bring it up so soon in case I went back down there.
“She wanted me to stop, threatened to do it to herself if I didn’t.”
He huffs out a laugh. “I like her.” My head snaps toward him, and he raises his hands. “Not like that.”
He better not, it would be unfortunate if I had to send him away. I couldn’t kill him, but I don’t think it would be far off with the things I would do to keep Rhea.
He looks toward her sleeping form, and I follow his gaze. “I like her for you,” he says. “She doesn’t take your shit, calls you out on your bullshit and most of all,” he says, serious all of a sudden. “She brings out things in you that I thought were lost forever.” My brows crease at that. “Your heart, Darius.”
I guess he is right in that. Years of bloodshed have hardened and hidden it away. But it beats for her now, and it makes me do things I would never have done.
Like planting hundreds of seeds of her favorite flowers, buying her a glass wolf, collecting her carvings, feeding her…
“It is not mine, brother,” I tell him. “She has my heart now, and she can do with it what she wishes.”
He hums. “She will take care of it,” he says quietly.
She could destroy it if she wanted.
Rhea shuffles back against the rolled-up fur, her brows pinching like she knows it’s not me. My chest puffs out at that, and Drax releases a purr.
She knows I’m not really there beside her, she knows she has peace in my arms even though they have shown so much violence.
She hasn’t known true peace or been protected for so long, but I will give my dying breath to give her that.
Shedeservesthat much.
“She’s your match, everything you never knew you ever needed or wanted,” Leo says, and I nod. I’m not going to deny it.
“She is…everything.”
My moonlight.
She shines the brightest, even on the darkest of days.
Since my eyes locked with hers, the lands shifted, and so did I.
“We will make it right,” Leo says, his voice strong.
“We will.”
The Highers, the rogures… we will rid them from the lands, and Vrohkaria can have peace.
Shewill have peace.
Because she is who I will protect, and she is the one I will make sure the lands are safe for.
I press a hand to the side of my rib, where my sister’s name has been so delicately intertwined with other markings.
Isn’t that right, baby sister? I will do for her what I couldn’t for you.
I vow it.
Eighteen
