saved Lethe and me both, but she let us suffer.”
“I wish you had told me before we struck a deal with her. Facing her again must have been painful for you.”
“There was no other choice. No one else can do what she does.”
“How can a healer be so cruel? That type of abuse ought to be anathema to her.”
“What she did, it didn’t heal me. It allowed me to recall those years through a filter. I didn’t have to feel what I had done. The grief, the rage, the anger. It all went away. For a while. It gave me time to adjust to being back here, to having a normal life.”
“Can I ask what made you dedicate yourself to teaching women self-defense?”
Hadley was too perceptive to let that detail slip, and he was here to tell her everything, to bare his soul as hers had been peeled back for him.
“Gwyllgi males are bred to care for females and those weaker than themselves, and I had a particularly chivalrous streak. Thanks to Lethe and Mom, I looked up to females as role models. It was part of the fabric of my personality.”
“And this goblin twisted it?”
“He pitted me against females of all species, but mostly my own. It guaranteed the bouts lasted longer, and it made them bloodier. My beast didn’t fight back until it had no choice, but it refused to lose. To die. It kept me locked out of its head while it fought, and then it left me to deal with the aftermath.”
Grief-filled screams as he thrashed on the floor of his cell in the throes of his nightmares, hating himself, hating the goblin, hating Faerie and everyone in it, had ruined his voice beyond repair. But no matter how loudly he yelled, no one heard him. No one came to help. No one until Lethe.
“You’ve been atoning. All this time.” She opened the door all the way, and the heartbreak on her face twisted his stomach until he worried he might get sick in her hall. “You’ve been paying for your survival.”
He didn’t dare move. “So have you.”
“I brought this on myself. I made the choices that brought me here.”
“So did I.”
“It’s not the same, Midas, and you know it.”
“I was young and foolish,” he said, “and I made a mistake that cost people their lives.”
Her mouth worked, but she fumbled her argument.
“Lethe believed in me, that I could get better, and I refused to let her down. That’s all that’s kept me going. I wanted my family to finally be happy. I wanted them to think I was okay. I didn’t realize how miserable I had become until I met you.”
“I can’t tell if that’s a compliment.”
“I pretended for so long, I couldn’t tell what was real anymore.” He glanced up then. “You’re the first real thing in my life since I came back. I don’t have to act when I’m with you.”
“I’ve been lying to you since the moment we met. How can I be your one real thing when I’m fake?”
A hesitant smile twitched on the edge of his mouth. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
“You’re breaking out the big guns.” Blushing, she wiped her face dry with the hem of her shirt. “Next thing I know, you’ll be quoting full-on poetry at me.”
“Go sleep.” He shoved off the frame, embarrassed he wanted to be romantic for her. “I’ll be here.”
The way she lingered in the doorway telegraphed her fear she would wake to find him gone, and it gutted him all over again. He had known she was different. Hadn’t his mother warned him to find out sooner rather than later why she set their fur on end at times? He had been so certain he could handle it, but he let his past, his fears, rule him.
“There’s one more thing.” He waited until she held out her hand then dropped a wide leather bracelet onto it. The heft of it made it clear it was meant for a man. For him. “The sight is permanent, for both of us. Only the fae who gave it to us can take it back, and I’m done bargaining.”
“What is this?” She rubbed her thumb across the etched surface. “What does it do?”
“It’s a charm that’s spelled to blind me to the sight.”
“Why offer it to me?”
“You deserve to choose how I see you.” He folded her hand over it. “Amelie or Hadley, the decision is yours.”
“Thank you.” She clenched her