These Twisted Bonds (These Hollow Vows, #2)(90)

When I don’t immediately obey, he smiles, as if he knows exactly what I’m thinking, but then he tilts my chin, directing my gaze skyward, and I gasp.

Never have I seen so many stars shine so brightly in such a clear, lush sky. All I can do is stare for a long time as memories from my childhood niggle at the back of my mind. My mother’s voice. She’s in the next room, speaking to a woman who scares her. She scares me too. Her mouth is too big for her face, her eyes too pale. Then my mother’s holding my hand and pointing to the most beautiful starry night I’ve ever seen.

Abriella, make a wish.

Then the wind in my hair as we race on horseback on the beach away from . . . something.

“Are you okay?” Finn asks.

Like grains of sand between my fingers, the memory slips away before I can make sense of it.

“I’m fine.”

“You left me for a minute there,” he says.

I shake my head. “I was just . . . remembering a day from my childhood. Thank you for bringing me here.” I don’t dare take my eyes off the sky, too afraid I might miss something.

“It’s yours,” he says softly.

I smile at a shooting star. “The sky belongs to everyone. And we all belong to it.”

“Abriella.” His voice is firm enough that I pull my gaze back to meet his. “This cottage is yours.

The cottage and the land it sits upon—the whole damn mountain belongs to you.”

I shake my head. “I don’t understand.”

He blows out a breath. “Mother left this piece of property to me. I think she knew I needed a place of my own away from the Midnight Palace. Now I’m giving it to you.”

“You can’t do that, Finn.”

“I already did,” he says softly. “It’s done. I finalized the paperwork before we left the capital.”

“But . . . why?”

He swallows. “Because I know you think you don’t fit in this world. I know you think that by giving up your human life, you also gave up your only chance of going home.” He takes my hand and squeezes my fingers. “I can’t change what happened, and I can’t make the mortal realm a safe place for you, but I can give you a place to call home. The most beautiful place in my whole court. It’s yours.”

“In exchange for what? What do you want from me?”

“Many things, but nothing in exchange for this.” He scans my face again and again. “It’s a gift— yours, whether you end up in the palace or not and whether you stay with Sebastian or not.” He huffs out a dry laugh and gives me a wry grin. “All we have to do is keep the queen from destroying it.”

“Why not keep it for yourself?” I ask. “What if Sebastian ends up on the throne? You need a home as much as I do.”

Finn lowers himself to the floor, leaning back on his elbows as he watches the stars. There’s a subtle, pulsing energy that rolls off him in the starlight, as if he draws his power from the night itself.

It’s stronger since the curse broke, stronger still here in the Court of the Moon. It’s not anything I can explain with the vocabulary I have, but it’s there—and I can sense it as surely as I can see the moon shining above.

I follow his lead, taking a place beside him on the cool, tiled rooftop.

“Do you remember the night you helped me rescue Jalek?” he asks. “We sat outside together afterward and you told me your mother taught you to wish on stars.”

Abriella, every star in that sky shines for you.

I swallow hard. The physical attraction to Finn was there from the first moment, but that night was the first time I realized there was something more than that between us. “I remember.”

“That night I realized how much I wanted to bring you here.” He blows out a breath. “I was trying to figure out a way I could do it safely, without being detected by Mordeus. Jalek and Kane both thought I was crazy. I told them it was a way to earn your trust so that when I finally suggested the bond, you’d say yes . . . but I knew. Even then, I knew I couldn’t do what I needed to.”

“You mean you couldn’t kill me.”

Turning his head, he meets my eyes and nods.

“I hate that I’m the reason for this mess,” I say softly. “This is all my fault.”

“It’s not. Not at all.”

“Seems like it’s a lot more mine than it is yours.”

Turning, he narrows his eyes at me. “How many times did you tell me no?”

“What?”

“How many times did you refuse to bond with me?”

“You didn’t—”

“I didn’t ask. I never asked. I never even tried to make a compelling argument. I was so damn busy trying to think of a solution that didn’t—” His mouth snaps shut, and he turns his face back toward the sky.

A solution that didn’t involve hurting me, I realize.

He lies flat on his back and closes his eyes for a beat.

“I don’t understand, Finn.”

He takes several deep breaths before he turns his head and looks at me, his eyes so bleak. “What don’t you understand?”

“You are covered in tattoos,” I whisper. “You are forever marked by the evidence of the sacrifices you made to save your kingdom.”