Page 65 of Promised to the Nightmare Realm
Tristan shifts his weight and strokes the cast on his arm. “Are you sure? I could—”
“I don’t want to seeyouespecially. When I’m rested enough to think, I’ll send you a message. Through the medics, or…something. We don’t have to spend time together to research the unicorn.”
Tristan hesitates but then clears his throat. “As you wish. Lady, stay.”
She looks up in shock when he leaves, and at another time in my life it would have been adorable and hilarious. I don’t have the energy to enjoy her reaction.
I listen to his footsteps, my heart beating faster as the distance between us grows, and hug Lady tightly, disbelieving that she’s here with me. She’s grown so big and strange, but when she licks my face as if I’m covered in peanut butter, I know she recognizes me.
Chapter 22
Tristan
My feet are like two lead anchors when I walk away from Nate’s door. But my heart is even heavier, and the contempt I saw in his black eyes is staining every bit of me.
I did that to him.
I left him.
We both know it.
He has to depend on me now, but that doesn’t mean he trusts me, and I fear he never will. I wasted two months sulking and fantasizing about ways in which I would woo him and impress him while he remained locked in a dungeon. Suffering. Hoping for my help. I’ve let him down, and the blooming affection I’ve clung to during his absence might never recover.
I walk down the winding stairs as if in a trance and the movement makes me dizzy with memories of the terrifying moment when I laid eyes on him in the dungeon. It cuts my chest into ribbons to think I was playing with Lady, complaining about not getting the flavor of pie I wanted, or daydreamingabout bedding him again while Nate was going through incomprehensible horrors.
And all that time, he thought I’d abandoned him.
Maybe I did. Should I have not enquired about him more sternly? Forced my way in sooner?
I struggle to breathe by the time I get back to the empty library. The weight of guilt settles over my chest like a nightmare demon, and I have to sit down. I slide down the nearest wall in a secluded part of the library. The moon is rising, but it will be a while before courtiers start browsing the shelves, so I’m safe to wallow in self-pity I don’t deserve.
I fucked up. Again. I’m a fuck up. My title and the feats accomplished at tournaments mean nothing if I can’t protect the ones I care about.
And now Nate doesn’t even want to see me.
A sob tears out of my throat when I can’t stand it anymore. My mind is fixated on every second I spent with him, and every bad decision. How I bound his shadow to mine because I thought it was so obvious he’d want to be promised to me.
I thought it was romantic, maybe even noble to bind his shadow to mine so he would always have a place beside me. So he would never have to doubt where he belonged.
But instead of asking what he wants, I claimed him like he’s an uncharted island, not a person with a will of his own.
I press my palms into my eyes with a helpless sob. My chest aches as if something inside it is trying to claw its way out. I can't remember the last time I broke down like this.
What kind of knight does this? What kind of protector makes the person he swore to guard feel trapped?
Nate trusted me. Even after everything he endured, he trusted me enough to fall asleep in my arms at the tavern. To let me touch him. To believe me when I said I would help him.
But I didn’t do it fast enough.
As I sink into the dark well of memories, the smell of the dungeon hits me first. Rot, blood, damp stone.
Nate chained like some discarded animal in the corner of the cell.
My stomach twists violently as memories of his abused body flash through my mind. His ribs so prominent under the skin. Bruises layered over bruises in sick shades of purple and yellow. His lip split, his cheeks hollowed, his beautiful dark eyes sunken so deep in their sockets I barely recognized him.
The man I was dreaming about, the man whose laugh I fell for and whose mouth I tasted not so long ago—he was gone, replaced by this hollow, starved creature who looked up at me as if he wasn’t sure whether I was even real.
I remember the way his body felt when I lifted him. The grown man who should have been a solid weight in my arms felt like little more than bones wrapped in skin. His head lolled against my shoulder, and for one sickening heartbeat I thought I arrived in time to carry a corpse out of that place.
