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Goodbye, Blaidd.
Good luck.
And if by some miracle, you choose to try to bed your beloved Rowena while I am gone, pray she never meets the sharp end of my sickle.
—Faelynn
Chapter 11
Blaidd drifted through the house like a rudderless boat. The letter was clenched in his hand, and he would occasionally read a line as if to remind himself that this wasn't a nightmare.
Room to room, step by measured step, it felt like the house itself was watching. What struck him was the calculation; she had been planning this for a while.
She wants to leave me behind, a voice whispered inside him.She wants it finished.
Her tools were missing from the shed he should have built.
The knives she favoured were gone. The little sharpening stone she had once muttered about liking was no longer in its little box. All was removed like an unspoken declaration.
The hearth, however, had been laid and swept. The ash was cleared and the kindling stacked. The firepit was left ready, as though for someone else.
A courtesy.
A final act of care that landed much harder in the face of his neglect.
His gaze lifted and slid over the portrait.
Isolde and him on their mating day.
It hung in the main room, as it always had. The couple looked so happy. A crown of white blossoms in her hair, lips curved in a smile that had once undone him.
A lie which was revealed all too soon.
The weary thought moved through him as it always did whenever he saw it.
He turned away sharply, breath rough in his chest.
A lie, his wolf echoed, restless beneath his skin.
His feet led him to his study. It was his private space, neither Isolde nor Fae ever trespassed.
The smaller portrait sat on the table—the one he had commissioned for himself. A guilty pleasure. Fae sat alone with her little solemn face, eyes watchful and nervous rather than happy. The orange blossoms were woven into hair the colour of mahogany.
That was how she had smelled from the start: of citrus and crushed petals, of sweetness and home.
He stared at it, desperation twisting his gut into a knot as his fingers bit into the wood of the frame.
How did I smell to you? the thought came unbidden.
Like failure? Smoke? A lie?
Or worse…nothing at all?
He tried to picture Fae standing here, looking at her image in his hand. The contrast from the portrait in the hall must have hurt her badly. She must have had to shield herself against a memory she had never been allowed to challenge.
Pain blossomed in his chest at all he had not given her.
I only need to hold on a little longer, he had told himself before this last trip, clinging to the thought that freedom to reveal the truth was finally almost within his grasp.
