As she screamed, coming apart at the seams, he threw back his head, and came apart, too.
He collapsed atop her but quickly collapsed to his side. They both lay there for a moment.
“I am undone,” he rasped.
“You aren’t the only one.”
Still laboring for breath, he swiped up a discarded T-shirt and cleaned her. When he finished, he tugged her against his furnace of a body.
She could do nothing but mold against him and marvel. With Laban, she’d always experienced the pangs of addiction at this point, as if she could never get enough. As if—she cringed with merely the thought—something had been missing, and she’d constantly sought to fill a void. Here and now, she wanted only to luxuriate in this seemingly endless sea of contentment.
But how could that be? What did it mean? Why wasn’t the guilt attacking her with renewed force? Where was the tide of regret?
Roux must have sensed the source of her unease; he ran his fingertip along the jewel, frowning when it remained firmly attached. “Is there anything I can do to earn your forgiveness?”
No. Yes. Maybe? “I don’t hate you. Not anymore,” she admitted, the act disgracefully easy. “But I’ll always hate what you did.” How could she not? Her daughter had to live without her father.
“Iamsorry I hurt you and your family, Lyla.”
“I know.” And she did. Looking back without her malice-colored glasses firmly in place, she could see that he’d accepted her vengeance as his due.
“Shall we discuss the tournament?” he asked, tracing his fingertips along the ridges of her spine. “You mentioned the harpy and Phoenix aided you today.”
Not wanting to ruin the mood, she took the bait: the changing of the subject. “Yep. It was quite a shock, too. Since we were in the middle of a round, they claimed they had no time to explain. I should hunt them down and get answers.”
“Or stay here with me. Carrigan, the Phoenix. She’s dangerous. Be leery of her.”
“Oh?” Remembered jealousy flared. Blythe traced the tip of a claw around one of his nipples. “Do tell.”
“She says she received instruction from an oracle before voluntarily coming to this realm. That she has always known she will escape with me, and she alone will decide your fate.”
“In case you’re curious, she’s wrong.Idecide my fate.” And she’d decided to win the tournament, find a way to save Roux’s blessing task without dying, and defeat Erebus.
Should Blythe tell Roux about her most recent dealings with the god or not? And what of the Laban sighting?
No. Better to wait until she had processed everything. Roux would insist on deep diving into the encounter, and currently she had no answers. Honestly, she didn’t know what to think about anything anymore.
Could she truly work with Laban’s executioner? Could she willingly help save the Astra army who’d destroyed her daughter’s life? Would Isla grow to despise her for such a deed?
Blythe, the first harpy in history to halfway forgive rather than fully retaliate? The madness!
“I think the oracle told Carrigan to align with Erebus,” she said. “He expects me to kill you. An assignment he believes only I can carry out successfully.” Something the Astra had already known. “It makes sense that he’d order Carrigan and Lucca to help me, and they’d actually obey. He probably promised them one-way tickets off realm. Which means they now grace the top of my hit list. Friends of my enemy are my enemy.”
“According to Penelope,” Roux said, kissing her temple, “not even Erebus is able to flash from this place. He visits her through doorways he fears to exit.”
Yes, Blythe had firsthand experience with those doors. “Do you know of a way home?” Yeah. Decision made. Firm this time. Win the tournament, return to Harpina with Roux, complete his task, stay alive, deal with Erebus. Then figure out all the rest.
“I have ideas. Namely, creating a doorway of my own. Something best done after the tournament, so no one else uses it.”
Smart. “If that fails, maybe I can drag you into a spirit realm and Ation will lose its hold on us.”
“Perhaps,” he said, “but either way, we will leave this realm together. I will allow no other outcome.” Determination hardened his voice, and she shivered. “Now, tell me what happened the other night, after I returned from feeding the wraiths.”
When she’d stared at hisalevala? “I saw an endless, spinning slideshow of your death and torture courtesy of the other Astra, who looked like shadow puppets.”
He inhaled sharply, exhaled heavily. “My task usually involves entering an echo realm where memories of our tasks are recorded.”
“Recorded? Why?”