Page 79 of Incoronate
“Probably not,” I admitted. “But at least then I’d know where you stood.” It took everything in me to lift my eyes and meet his then. “Is that where you stand?”
“In part,” he answered, and the honesty in his voice made my chest constrict. “I think it is admirable that you want to protect him. However, I am not certain you have fully grasped what bringing him into this house means.”
“I know exactly what it means,” I said, defensive.
“Is that right?” He moved closer, coming to stand beside the bed. “Because from where I am standing, what I see is a woman making a choice that will haunt her for the rest of her life. However long or short that may turn out to be.”
My throat tightened. As painful as it was to hear, I wasn’t entirely sure he was wrong. But it didn’t change anything. “I’m not going to let them kill an innocent baby just because they’re afraid of what he might become.”
“I am not asking you to,” he said, his voice gentling despite the tension threading through every line of him. “However, I need you to understand what you have done tonight, angel. You have painted a target on your back tonight that will never fade. Not for the rest of your life.” He lowered himself down onto one knee beside the bed so that we were eye level, his dark gaze burning into mine with all the gravity of a man trying to make me hear something he could not stand to repeat twice. “Every faction will come for him. The Order. The Council. Every zealot who believes the prophecy and every opportunist who wants to twist it to his own ends. And you have just declared yourself the only thing standing between them and what they want.”
I swallowed hard. “I know.”
“Do you?” he pressed. “Because knowing it intellectually and living it are two very different things. They will never stop coming. Never stop hunting. And when they exhaust every other option, they will come for you. Not just to get to him, but to eliminate the threat you pose by keeping him alive.” His knuckles brushed across my cheek with a tenderness so devastating I almost forgot how to breathe through it. “You have made yourself their enemy, angel. And I am trying very hard to reconcile myself to the fact that the woman I love has just ensured she will spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder, fighting battles she never asked for, all to save a child the world has already condemned.”
Tears pricked at my eyes. “Well, what was the alternative, Dominic? Handing him over to the Roderick sisters?” The very thought turned my stomach, and I shook my head against it before he could answer. “They’ll hunt him regardless, and even if the sisters managed to keep him safe from the Order, what would become of him being raised by Dark Casters? They would warp his mind before he ever had a chance to decide who he wanted to be. He’s my family, Dominic. I can’t let that happen to him.”
“I know you can’t,” he agreed with a tender solemnity that almost undid me. “It is one of the things I love most about you. That unwavering conviction to do what’s right even when it costs you everything.” His mouth pressed into a hard line. “Yet that doesn’t make it any easier to watch you walk willingly into a war you might not survive.”
“Look, I don’t expect you to take this on,” I said, my voice cracking. “To put your life at risk for Ares. This is my choice, and if you’d rather walk away from it…from me, I would understand. I would never expect you—”
“Do you really think so little of me?” he asked, hurt flashing across his features.
“I just staked you through the heart a few hours ago,” I pointed out gently. “I think you’re entitled to some distance.”
“At the Horsemen’s behest,” he reminded me. “Though I must confess,” he said, his lips pulling into that slow, wicked smirk that had no business making my stomach flip the way it did, “there was something rather intoxicating about the way you looked at me with murder in your eyes right before you struck. Utterly ruthless and lethally beautiful.”
Heat crept up my neck despite everything. “Of course you’d be turned on by that. You’re completely twisted.”
“Irrefutably,” he agreed without a hint of remorse.
A laugh bubbled out of me before I could stop it, and I met his eyes again. “Then if that is really how you feel, why have you been so distant?”
His expression gentled, the smirk fading by degrees as he searched for the right way to answer me. And then he reached out and brushed his thumb along the line of my jaw with a tenderness that made my breath stutter in my chest.
“Because I am terrified of how this will end,” he admitted, his voice low. “Because I can see every possible future that stems from tonight’s decision, and in nearly all of them, you are the one who pays the price.” His dark eyes held mine, open and unguarded in a way I had only seen from him a handful of times across the years. “I do not disapprove of your choice to protect him. I could never disapprove of you doing what you believe is right. What I disapprove of is a world that will make you suffer for it. That will hunt you and hurt you and try to destroy you for daring to show mercy to something it has decided is irredeemable.”
“But mostly,” he continued, his voice barely above a whisper. “I am afraid of losing you. I’m afraid that one day they will come with more than we can handle, and I’ll have to watch you fall because you refused to abandon him. Becauseyour heart is too good to let an innocent child die, even if saving him means sacrificing yourself.” His forehead came to rest against mine. “And I’m angry at myself for even thinking it, but part of me wishes you’d made the easier choice. The safer choice. The one that would not put you directly in harm’s way for the rest of your life.”
My breath caught. “I’m so sorry.”
“Never apologize for being who you are, angel. I only wish that heart of yours wasn’t so much bigger than your sense of self-preservation.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that. I’d definitely never been great with the whole self-preservation thing.
His palm slid to the back of my neck. “I may not fully approve of the situation you have put yourself in, angel, but I will never disapprove of you. And I will never walk away from you because the path you have chosen is difficult or dangerous. If you’re determined to fight this battle, then I am determined to fight it beside you.”
“Even though it terrifies you?” I whispered.
“Especially because it terrifies me,” he said. “Because the only thing more terrifying to me than what is coming is the thought of facing a single day without you in it.” He leaned in and pressed a kiss to my forehead, lingering there just long enough that I felt the ghost of it pressed into my skin even after he pulled away.
A single tear escaped, sliding down my cheek.
He caught it before it could reach my jaw, his thumb brushing against my skin with the same achingly careful touch he always used when he was trying to remind himself I was still here. Still real. Still his.
“I am forever at your side, angel. Through every storm. Every battle. Every impossible choice you make.” His voice dropped lower, each word landing like a vow carved intostone. “And should the world decide it wants to stand in our way, then I will burn it down myself and gift you the ashes.”
25. NO GOING BACK
