I moved deeper into the castle, stepping over the dead who’d been forgotten. Hierarchy played a considerable role in this world. I’d removed it from the horde, and we’d burned our soldiers with honors most men fought to obtain. I’d placed Darynda beside princes, marking her royalty in my eyes. To me, they’d been people. They’d been my family, and they’d accepted me. What the fuck had that gotten them?
Dead.
I left a trail of death in both worlds. What if I didn’t belong in either? That was my hold-up. What if I abandoned the humans, and I didn’t fit in here?
If I left Faery, I knew I wouldn’t fit into the human world. Sure, I could visit, and I could assist Alden with the guild, but only from the shadows. I wasn’t part of that world anymore. Here, I led at Ryder’s side. I was nothing without him, though, not in this or any world. If he left me, I’d become some pathetic creature that everyone pitied. Shit, I’d pity myself if he left me because I craved him in an unhealthy way.
Love was such a two-sided sword that cut both ways. I’d never once felt this with Adrian. When I walked away from him, I hadn’t worried about what I would become afterward, because I knew I’d be okay. Ryder was different. Everything about us pulled us together, but he’d lied, even though he’d told me he couldn’t. Ryder expected me to understand that was the case at first, but time had passed, and he hadn’t offered me the truth. He didn’t trust me enough to tell me what he truly was.
Did I keep secrets? Yes, but only because the walls were listening, and I couldn’t just take Ryder out of the castle because his archaic laws prevented it. He’d kept me under his thumb, driving me to do what the horde needed me to do, so I’d planned Eris’s downfall on my own. Was it a betrayal? No. I’d been trying to save my family and thought I was doing what was right.
Did I mean to rid him of the beast? Hell, no. I loved the creature that’d given me my babes, and would never want him gone. Would I have stopped what happened? I wasn’t sure I would’ve since I hadn’t even realized I was doing it. But now, I couldn’t trust Ryder and that hurt.
He loved me, but he’d lied to me. He could fucking lie this whole time! So what was the truth? What part of us was even real? I held secrets that Danu asked me to keep hidden from the man I loved. I thought I’d been protecting him, but I hadn’t. I’d been hurting him.
Ryder was a fucking god! I’d unknowingly married a god, and I’d created children with him. My entire life was fabricated from the point of birth in lies. My whole world was crumbling around me, and I had nothing left.
There was no one I could turn to and nowhere to go. Everything that had ever happened to me was by design, and not something I created. I was the product of a destiny Danu and Ryder had chosen for me.
Now I was stuck in my worst nightmare, living in a world that I wasn’t sure would accept me while being removed from the only one I’d ever known. It was a violent rejection while being told everything was my fault.
I wasn’t even very old by human standards, and everyone expected me to do shit that people centuries older than me were doing, and I hadn’t figured out how to accomplish it yet. My life had been one rejection after another, filled with death.
Everyone I loved died, and it wasn’t just death, they died horribly! I’d been tossed from Faery, hidden in the human world, and then brought back here to save it. It wasn’t like anyone asked me what I wanted.
The beast mounted me, and he’d fucking bred me like one. Not that the sex was bad, but he’d placed life into my womb without asking me if I wanted it. I hadn’t ever considered becoming a mother. Adrian and I had