Page 28 of Shadowborne: Reckoning

And the fear when it looked like he might actually kill Ruin in that chair.

The thought made me tense. I’d stopped talking because I’d already told him the worst of what happened. But now… now it was his turn.

He continued stroking my back and wet hair for a long minute. “What next?”

“You saved me. You f-fought him. You won. And then you almost k-killed him.”

Donavyn nodded and sighed.

“I feel like I might not lose my mind now. So, that means it’s your turn,” I whispered.

10. Atlas

SOUNDTRACK: In the Air Tonight by Sons of Legion

~ DONAVYN ~

‘Your mate wisely calls you to heed your own advice, Donavyn.’ Kgosi urged. He’d settled close to the castle to be available tonight. I almost snapped back, but I swallowed the temptation, because I knew he was right. I’d given her advice, knowing it was right and true, because I’d lived it. That meant that I now needed to take it.

She’d told me everything that happened in that room before I arrived, and the only thing I wanted more than to leave and hunt that fucker down, was to make her feel safe.

‘And therein lies your problem, Donavyn. Because you cannot seek vengeance and make her safe in the same step. So, which will it be?’

I took a deep breath. Bren burrowed deeper under my chin, clinging harder—but now the cord that linked us flowed with comfort and reassurance from her.

“You don’t need to comfort me. You’ve been through enough,” I muttered in her ear.

“You’re helping me. I want to help you, too.” Her voice was muffled under my neck. I almost growled when she pulled her head back, but she didn’t roll away. Just looked up at me, her damp hair messy, cheeks pink where she’d been snuggled next to my skin. “Tell me,” she said solemnly, her eyes still red from her own tears.

I sensed Kgosi’s urging, and tried not to fight it. I had no desire to burden her further, but…

“I’m afraid of the part of me that felt satisfied by hurting him,” I muttered grimly.

She inhaled slowly like she was afraid and I almost stopped. But that sense of Kgosi, behind me, pushing me forward became sharp.

I swallowed hard. “When I found him… pinning you like that… Bren, if I’d had a weapon in my hand, he’d be dead. I know I promised you, but I didn’t think. It was in me to remove him from this world. And it’s only by the grace of God that I was forced to fight him instead.”

She nodded and shook her head in response when I spoke, tightened her arms around me, and clung, or stroked my back. But she didn’t speak.

Her heart, Kgosi’s heart, even Akhane in there somewhere… I could sense all of them urging me forward. And for the first time, I stopped fighting it.

“He stole from you,” I said darkly, my voice rough with emotion and anger. “And that stole from me.”

Bren’s breath rushed out of her. “I don’t think I can, either.”

‘You will both heal and find your hearts again. Forgiveness does not excuse the offense, it only rejects the poison it feeds into you,’ Kgosi insisted.

I shared that with Bren and to my surprise, she softened in my arms. “I’d do anything not to carry him with me anymore,” she whispered.

My anger rushed into the void that left, but for the first time, I caught it myself. I heard Kgosi’s approving rumble in my head, and I took a moment to turn that over, to look at it from all angles.

Why was I, who so firmly believed that anger was only useful in defense of the innocent, or the weak, so ready to fan the flames of my own rage when it came to Ruin?

Because I’d led him in honor, and he shat on that… and on her. She was innocent in this, and I desperately wanted to protect her.

‘Is that truly it, Donavyn? Is that the deepest desire of your heart?’

‘The fact that you ask me that implies you don’t believe it is.’