Page 50 of Trapped By Claws
Why did it—why did the thought of leaving or wounding his feelings hurt?
The door scraped open. Tagger bolted in through the flap, not seeming to care that the door itself was already moving. Corvin followed close behind. His stripes still weren't their usual brightness.
I stood, my heart in my throat. "Where did you go?"
He stared at me, his hand on the door. "I'm ready to talk, Mena." He spoke the words with such calm and weight, but torment filled his eyes.
My stomach dropped. "Yes?" What did he want to talk about exactly? The entire mood had shifted between us. It was like standing on uneven ground.
He shut the door and strode closer. I was relieved to see he was steadier on his feet now. With a sigh, he dragged his fingersthrough his hair. "I went back to the island. This time I did speak with your mother."
"How is she?"
He opened his mouth to speak, then shook his head. "She's safe. And well. At least as well as one can be in her situation."
I stilled, staring at him, my hands folded tight against one another.
"I told her you were safe," he said. There was a heaviness in his voice, weighing down his shoulders. "I told her I hadn't harmed you. That I wouldn't. That I would…I would never." He covered his mouth, his head dropping. His mouth twitched. "I need to explain. When all this started, I didn't think your mother loved you."
I pulled back, frowning. "How could you say that?"
"Not all mothers love their children equally. My family abandoned me. As soon as it was known that I was diseased and I could never change from this…" He gestured toward his stripes, still not looking at me. "My own mother left me on the rocks to be found by the king's fae. And…well, you might not realize this, but even before our first encounter, I heard what was happening on the ship."
My eyes widened. "You mean the first time I saw you wasn't the first time you saw me?"
He shook his head. "I can travel all the neutral waters surrounding the North Sea, though I am not allowed to set foot on land. And as soon as the ship entered those waters, I heard your mother's wails for the daughter she had lost. I heard her conversations with Hosvir and all her thoughts and justifications. Plans from half-formed hopes and desperate acts to scrape together some clue about Erryn's location. I knew Erryn's name before yours. It took me three days to realize who you were to her. I didn't even know you were her daughter."
I flinched. "Don't…" I warned, my voice hoarse.
His brow lifted. "I'm not trying to wound you," he said. "I am only stating what I saw and how I felt. I?—"
"I have watched my mother destroy her life searching for my little sister. But she loves me! I know she does."
He nodded then. "Yes. She does. You were the one who was supposed to stay and thrive. She leaned on you. You are the one who shouldered the impact of her grief along with your own sorrow. She sacrificed you?—"
"I went willingly," I said, my voice sharpening despite the thick tears in my throat.
"It wasn't fair. You gave up everything, and she didn't even try to stop you."
"It's not her fault," I whispered.
But he was right.
I had given up everything. Suitors. Stability. Dreams. Home. There had been times I hated Mama and Erryn, but I'd also never stopped loving them. And it had always been my decision to keep going. They were my family. And I couldn't imagine staying behind. The fae who stole Erryn stole our lives as well, and I had no answers. It was only recently I had been coming to terms with the fact I had to do something different because this was bad for both Mama and me. "It isn't."
He dipped his head forward, his voice raspy. "Not all of it. You love her. I understand this better now. And she loves you, although that love has become twisted in her desperation to find your sister. Her love wasn't clear to me, but the rest of it was. And I—I thought I could save you."
I startled. This wasn't where I had expected the conversation to go.
"I wanted to rescue you," he continued. "I wanted you for my own. I know—I know you aren't my mate. I'm forbidden to have one, and if I could have had a mate, the bond would have snapped into place between us almost at once. But still, Icouldn't stay away from you. Especially when I heard—I heard so much."
"I didn't realize that anyone could hear us on the ship," I said, still struggling with this revelation.
"There are no secrets on the sea," he said, his gaze on the floor. "At least not many. Sound carries over the water." He raked his hand through his hair as he sat on the stool. It creaked and tipped forward until he braced his boot against the cracked stone. "Even before I saw you, I felt for you. And—I don't know fully what I was thinking. I thought—I thought I could give you something more, somehow…I wanted to take care of you. But I've brought you into such danger. And now you're the one taking care of me. My feelings for you got twisted, and it wasn't about what was best for you or even what you wanted."
I kept my arms crossed. Confusion knotted inside me. "I've just…I'm good at taking care of things."
"I know." His throat bobbed before he glanced up at me, a soft wetness in his eyes. "I wanted you to be mine. I wanted you to stay. But there's something I want more. I want to take care of you. And taking care of you means letting you go."
