Page 123 of Winds of Ruin
Even on the verge of tears, she would try to melt me down to wanting.
“That isn’t an answer.” She leaned into my touch.
“No, I did not peep in your windows like a lusty teenager.”
“What a shame,” she teased but nodded for me to continue as she sucked in her cheeks.
“He told me his duty was to deliver us a message—that the last relic was not an object. It’s a person. That is what Aquas meant about the Sources creating the third relic. Ryn said the Reverist abilities Isolde sacrificed to Caym hinge on the black moon, but none will come should that person, a boy, live on.”
Her brows rose. “The boy is Dritan,” she concluded again. “Lark’s friend who was there when you were unbound.”
“Yes. But how did you know that?”
“As a babe, the Sources left him in a field of flames, and he thinks he was born in the in-between place where the Sources live. If I’m honest, I didn’t put any confidence in it at first. Buthebelieved it so thoroughly I didn’t want to sully the story he’d been told.”
Watching the way she chewed on her lip with excitement at this revelation warmed me, and I leaned in, longing to kiss her again before I tore up my last hope of ever having her. She tipped forward into my space; with only inches between us, I nearly faltered.
Hating what I was about to do, I nodded and swallowed hard. “It’s true. And I believe he is my and Firose’s son.”
She moved to rise, and I held her down by her shoulder.
“Let me up!” she exclaimed. Betrayal painted her features, and a breeze swept through the room, despite no windows being open.
“Please, please listen,” I soothed.
“How long have you known?” she questioned.
“Since waking,” I admitted.
Tears slipped down her cheeks at that.
I wiped them away with the thumb of my free hand.
“Fuck, I hate crying,” she snapped as she shook out her shoulders and straightened her posture. “You have ason? Dritan—he’s yours? Andhers?And you didn’t tell me…”
Her nose scrunched in dismay; I didn’t fault her.
Taking her chin between my fingers, I took a deep breath. “Yes,” I replied. “Ryn said he’d seen Firose—there, among the Sources. She’d been with child.”
El shook her head, looking away from me and toward the fire.
“There’s more, and you cannot fly off the handle and do anything impulsive. You need to let her forge her own path,” I whispered, not wanting this conversation to carry out of the room despite us being alone, as though the trees might whisper it.
“You’re scaring me,” she breathed out.
Her words sent goose bumps down my arms—she faced so many things, spiders aside, without fear. I took a deep breath.
This would go over so poorly.
“Tomorrow night I will announce that I have an heir. But Lark will also announce that she and Dritan have wed.”
Elsedora tried to rise again, and this time, I planted both palms on her shoulders and sat her back down.
Luckily her daggers were out of reach, because at this rate, I’d have one through my heart if she could reach them.
“For fuck’s sake, let me up, Emmerick,” she spat. She didn’t anger easily, but I’d just dealt her multiple blows of shock.
“I will when you promise not to go kill them. They found each other with no one’s help. Everything that has unraveled, everything we’ve lost, it all brought those two together. It cannot be a bad omen. Can it?”
