Page 26 of Dark Night of the Soul

He decided. Without me. The words landed heavy. Dangerous.

“You don’t get to make that call,” I said. My voice was shaking now, and I hated that. “You don’t get to decide what I can handle.”

“I get to decide what I will allow,” he shot back.

There was the line.

I laughed once, sharp and humorless. “You sound like them.”

That did it. I’d crossed it. I said them anyway.

For one long moment, he didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. When he stepped toward me, stopping short of touching, something in his eyes had gone cold and ancient—the part of him that had been forged in the Brotherhood’s fires.

“Don’t,” he warned.

“Then stop acting like the Brotherhood with better intentions,” I said. “Because that’s what this is. You taking control because you’re scared.”

His voice went dangerously soft. “I’m not scared.”

“Lie.”

That one word slashed, razor sharp, between us. For once, it wasn’t him saying it to me.

Silence crashed between us.

When he spoke again, his voice was low. Restrained. Careful.

“I’ve already lost you once,” he said. “I will not let it happen again.”

My chest ached at the raw truth of it. The mountain rose up between us once again.

“I didn’t die to be protected,” I said. My hands curled into fists. “I died because I chose to.”

His eyes burned. “And that choice nearly destroyed everyone who loved you.”

Everyone. Including him. Though he’d never say it outright.

We stood there, the forest watching, the wards humming, the world narrowing to the space between us.

Neither of us moved.

Neither of us won.

Neither of us would back down.

Both stubborn as the day is long. And that might end us.

I huffed out a breath, spun, and left him standing there guarding a war I hadn’t agreed to.

Chapter 10 | Kincade

I remained where I was. Listening to her receding footsteps. A door slammed inside the manor with a finality. She was angry.

Anger meant she was alive. Breathing. I’d rather have her angry with me than dead.

Everyone who loved you.

I hadn’t meant to say those words. Not like that. Not all at once. But once spoken, they lodged deep, barbed and unrelenting. I pressed my palm harder against the tree, feeling the rough bark bite into my skin, grounding me in the present.