Page 49 of The Stolen Throne
“Horse shit.”
He tenses, inching back from me, from my anger. I stab a finger in the air at him. “You are giving me no say. Not even asking me what I think or want.”
“Damn it, Meren. Don’t you see—”
“No.” I cut a hand through the air, and he snaps his mouth closed. “Don’t you see? From the second I was born, everyone around me has made decisions about my life. I’ve been given no choices. And I’m sick of it. Of everyone who knows me, I would have thought you would understand that.”
“I do.”
I scoff. “And yet you’re choosing for me anyway. That makes it worse.”
He stares at me. “You have to go out there and save the world.”
I still at that. “What?”
“Not because it’s your duty. I see you. I see the way you need to make sure everyone around you is safe—Tabra, Achlys, the Vanished, the Wanderers. You’re going after Eidolon yourself. You haven’t said so, but you don’t need to. I can see it in you.”
I stare at him.
“You think I didn’t guess?”
“No one else has.” Not even Cain or Achlys, who probably know me better than most.
“You have to do this. I hate that you have to do it, but it’s who you are. Not because you were born to be a sacrifice but because that’s your heart. I see you, Mereneith Evangeline.”
He’s the only person who leaves off the XII in my name. Like I’m the only one who’s had that name that he cares about.
His throat works around a swallow. “You have to keep fighting until it’s over. That’s your fate. And I will burn down the world if I have to, just to keep you safe while you do it. That’s mine.”
I’m being torn in a thousand pieces. Because everything within me wants to melt at that, even while I am violently rejecting it. “Even if it means keeping me safe from you?”
“Yes.” Unequivocal. Hard-edged.
I fold my arms across my chest. “What if my choice is to be together?”
He throws his hands in the air. “I’m dangerous. You seem to deliberately ignore that.”
“If I’ve learned anything from my life, it’s that making decisions based on fear doesn’t work.”
Reven says nothing.
“So many princesses of my line were hidden away, their lives forfeited to fear. So many of our queens taken and killed, and we did nothing. We just hunkered down and hoped it would stop.” I want to reach for him, place my hand over his heart, try to make him feel what I am, to understand. But I suspect if I do, he’ll shut me down. “You tried the same thing already. Made the Shadowood, a place you thought he couldn’t reach, and you hid there.”
A starkness flickers over his features, too fast to catch. When he still says nothing, I keep going with a fraught sort of idea that if I keep talking maybe he won’t walk away.
“Hiding doesn’t work. Waiting doesn’t work. Letting fear make us walk away from the small amount of good in our lives isn’t the answer, either. I can’t. I won’t.”
“Meren.” He’s shaking his head, listening but not hearing me. And there’s nothing I can do about it.
I’m not giving up. “Let me be clear…I see you as the good. Maybe the only good right now.”
“If I lose control,” he snaps. “If the Shadows take over, or even if I disappear you without meaning to…” He runs frustrated hands through his hair. “You say you won’t give up the good, won’t give up me, but if I hurt you—and it’s only a matter of time—I won’t risk that.”
“We beat Eidolon’s Shadows together once,” I point out. I almost killed him to do it, though. The edge of doubts doesn’t leave him. “Even a Shadowraith deserves some happiness, Reven.”
He ducks his head as a hundred emotions chase across his features.
Want. Need. Longing.
