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hadn’t even fought me. She had only rambled in French about her son, the very man who sat before me.
    “Before she was taken away, she told me something about my father that I didn’t believe until after I had left. Something about how he loved me, but he didn’t know how to show it, because he had never felt love before.”
    “I find that hard to believe.” I couldn’t keep the scoff out of my voice, not like I really tried. The idea of Edmund loving was painfully laughable.
    “So did I. Because I had never felt love before, either. I had never known love strong enough that losing it destroyed me. Losing Rosaline destroyed me. Losing you…” He paused, his voice catching in his throat as he turned away from me for the first time since I had woken up.
    I stared at him, trying to push the same emotions I was sure were plaguing him away, stop them from rising up in me. My bones bowed at the attempt, my spine curving in as Thom’s arms wrapped around himself, his back shuddering as he drew in breath.
    I reached forward without thinking, my hand pressing against his back in a desperate show of support, a plea to remind him I was there. Despite not wanting to, I was feeling the same things he was.
    Even after three hundred years, her death still hurt. It always would.
    “You can’t show love unless you know what it is to feel it. You can’t recognize it until you’ve lost it.” He spoke away from me as the room illuminated with a forked streak right outside the window as his body continued to shudder under my touch.
    “I’ve changed, Thom.” My hand dropped from his back as I spoke.
    He turned to me as the room roared with noise. “I know, but not as much as I was expecting. There is softness in your eyes that wasn’t there before. Even after Rosy was … born,” he ended lamely, his eyes leaving their intense focus to look at his large calloused hands as they writhed over each other.
    “Is that why you are sorry?” I asked, my voice so soft and meek I wasn’t even sure it was mine.
    I waited for him to answer, knowing I needed to give him time. I was sure I was ready to hear what was coming, part of me anxiously hoping it would help me solve the swirling identity puzzle I was trapped in. It was like an intro to a Yes song.
    “No. I’m sorry for leaving you behind.”
    I froze, every muscle tightening in tense ropes that froze me in place. My eyes widened as I stared at him, my heart a thundering pulse at the apology he had shared with me. It was an admission that I had been waiting my entire life to hear.
    He had left me behind.
    However, he had also held me as we cried, as we mourned the murder of a child we had both adored. That loss—that moment when we had watched her soul slip from her body and into the knife Edmund would later use against me—had destroyed us more than I think either of us had realized.
    He had withdrawn into himself, mourned and cried in inconsolable sobs that scared me, something only Sain understood. I, instead, had chosen to lock the emotion away, killing hundreds of Draks and thousands of mortals.
    It had been the only outlet I could find.
    I had needed him, but he couldn’t be there for me. He couldn’t, because he was as broken as I was, and inside that shattered soul, his only recourse was to flee, leaving me behind.
    Another pain had been added to the mound already there. I felt all the pain now as he reached for my hand, as his hot fingers wrapped around my cold ones, and his eyes searched mine, waiting for a response, for an acknowledgement, for the forgiveness I wasn’t sure I could give him.
    Not now.
    Not when the emotions, the sadness, the memories of abandonment were so fresh.
    With only a few words, he had brought all of them back. The gauntlet swelled inside of me so fast I could barely breathe. I could feel it building in a wave of magic and anger that I felt sure was going to explode out of me.
    I wanted it to explode out of me.
    I wanted Thom to hear, to