Page 46 of Asher
His gaze flicked over me, assessing, like he was searching for something he couldn’t find.
“Why do you do it?” he asked suddenly.
I frowned. “Do what?”
“Run yourself into the ground for a family that doesn’t seem to give a damn.”
The question sliced through me. I opened my mouth to snap back, but the words caught in my throat.
I looked away, staring at the floorboards, the dark grain twisting like veins beneath the surface.
“It’s not that simple,” I muttered. “Finn and Donovan… my brothers are all I have left.”
Gael was silent, but I felt his gaze on me, steady and unrelenting. It forced me to keep going, even though everything in me screamed to stop.
“I was supposed to protect them, especially Finn,” I said, the words dragging out of me like splinters. “After our parents died, it was just the three of us. Finn was different from Donovan and me. At one point, I thought he was the weakest of us, but I was wrong.”
I swallowed hard, the bitter taste of guilt coating my tongue.
“Finn trust the Guild, doesn’t trust me anymore. Maybe he’s right not to,” I said.
The silence that followed was suffocating. I expected Gael to scoff, to throw my failure back in my face. But he didn’t.
Instead, he stayed quiet, and when he finally spoke, his voice was softer than I’d ever heard it.
“Sometimes,” he said, his eyes distant, “the people we care about the most are the ones who cut the deepest.”
I looked up, surprised by the rawness in his tone. There was something in his eyes, a shadow of pain that mirrored my own.
“Beric?” I asked.
He nodded once, a short, jerky motion. “I’ve been with him for so long. Somewhere along the way, I stopped knowing where his loyalty ended and where his control began.”
The confession hung between us, fragile and dangerous.
It felt like we were both teetering on the edge of something, a thin line between who we were and who we were supposed to be.
“I used to think I meant something to him, to the nest,” Gael continued, his voice tight. “But maybe I was just a pawn.”
I met his gaze, my chest tightening. “Then why are you still with him?”
He laughed bitterly, the sound like shattered glass. “Sometimes it’s easier to cling to the devil you know.”
The words echoed in my head, a twisted reflection of my own choices.
I leaned back against the couch, the exhaustion creeping deeper into my bones.
My leg throbbed, but the pain felt distant now, overshadowed by something heavier.
“Maybe we’re both idiots,” I muttered.
Gael’s lips curled into a faint, almost-smile. “Maybe.”
Our eyes met, the space between us shrinking even though neither of us moved.
I felt the pull of it, the slow, magnetic draw that had nothing to do with logic or reason.
My heart pounded harder, each beat loud in my ears.
