The Broken Ones (The Malediction Trilogy 0.6)(70)

“But it isn’t a lie.” Marc’s voice cracked. “He never intended for you to die. If anything… if anything, he intended for you to force me to live if I got caught.”

Somehow, I’d known that. My father bet on certain things, and while he might have banked his plans on Marc bonding me to save me, he wouldn’t have counted on the twist of fate that saw me pregnant. “In a way,” I said, “that would’ve been worse. For you to have had to choose between my life and Tristan’s. Between my life and your cause.”

“But you’d be alive,” he said.

“Alive is not the same as living,” I whispered. “How long until you’d have grown to hate me? And, feeling your emotions every hour of every day, how long until I’d have grown to hate myself? Don’t for a moment believe that our happiness factored into his plans.”

“I shouldn’t have bonded you.”

The words were a knife to my gut, which made them a knife to his, and Marc flinched. “I don’t blame you,” I said, digging my nails into my palms. “Yours has always been the greater sacrifice.”

“Not bonding you would’ve been the sacrifice!” The room trembled, his emotions seeking an outlet in his magic. “You think that I was selfless to bond you, but it was selfishness. All I wanted was to be with you, to live my life with you, and so don’t for one heartbeat believe that I did it solely to save your life. I did it for myself. Because I love you. Because I need you. And because of that, you’re lying here dying.”

All the hate for my father and what he’d done abruptly rushed from my heart, and it felt to me like the greatest of burdens had been lifted from my shoulders. “You’re right,” I said. “If not for you, I wouldn’t be here at all. Perhaps I’d be dead by my father’s hand. Or more likely, living in fear in my family’s home, suffering his abuse while all hope of a better future was stripped away from me.”

“But at least you’d have a future.”

“A future of misery!” The outburst left me gasping for breath. “I’ve been happier in my time with you than in all my life. Because of you, so much of what I dreamed of and hoped for became my reality, and I refuse to regret that. I believe that a short life lived is better than endless years of merely enduring, and given the same circumstances, the same choice, I’d choose you and life and love all over again.”

Exhaustion fell over me, my magic struggling to repair my broken body, but faltering and failing like fingers that couldn’t quite grasp an elusive bit of sand. My heart fluttered, and it hurt enough that tears flooded my eyes.

“Pénélope, please don’t leave me.” His voice was strangled and desperate, and his arms wrapped around me, pulling my body against his. I clung to him with what strength I had, my fingers curving around the back of his head as he kissed me, tasting the salt of his tears. Then he pressed his cheek against mine and said, “All my life I’ve loved you. You’re the only one who made me believe that I was good enough as I am. That I was worth wanting. That I wasn’t just a broken thing better off in the shadows. What will I be without you?”

“Yourself.” It hurt, it hurt. “A man more good and kind and loyal than any I’ve known.”

“I need you.”

Maybe he did. But Trollus needed him more. “You have to keep fighting. You cannot let him win.”

“He already has.”

His hands shook where they gripped me, and I thought of Guerre, the game of strategy that everyone around me played so masterfully, and in which I’d always been a pawn. But I’d be a pawn no more. “Only the battle,” I whispered, turning my head to look in Tristan’s direction. “The war is yet to come.”

My vision was filling with blackness, the world falling away, and I wasn’t ready. Wasn’t ready for it to be over. Wasn’t ready to be parted from him. “I’m afraid.”

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, kissing me gently on the lips. And though I could still feel him, still hear him, the thread binding us together was fraying. Diminishing. “Pénélope, if there’s a place we go in death, I’ll follow you there.” He sounded so distant. So far away. “I’ll find you.”

Not yet. Not yet.

“Pénélope, please.”

“I love you.” I needed him to know that, even as I was falling. Even as the world was fading. I needed that to be my legacy, the one thing he remembered above all else. “I love you. I love you. I





Epilogue





Tristan





Marc screamed.

In my life, I’d seen men injured. Tortured. Killed.

This was something different.

This was something worse.

Grief, in its purest form. The sort that carved into a soul, ruthlessly destroying everything good: love, hope, passion, devotion. Leaving behind only the blackest of emotions to drag one down and down until the slice of a knife, the twist of a neck, or a bullet in the skull seemed like a blessed relief. A mercy.

I hadn’t known there could be grief like that.

For all my preparation, it froze me in place in the corner where I lurked.

He screamed again, her name this time. Dragged her up into his arms. Pénélope’s head lolled back, silver eyes dull and sightless. Even in death, she was lovely. But lovely like an object. A thing. It was an echo of the beauty she’d once possessed, because what had made her her was gone. And even though I had not loved her – had, perhaps, even hated her in the end – the absence of that radiance hurt.