I leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek before he turned his head to meet my lips. It was a soft kiss, a gentle kiss, a tender kiss of forgiveness that didn’t need to be spoken. I didn’t want to break away, but I knew I had to, because our conversation wasn’t over yet.

Both of us sat back in our chairs, and neither of us needed the link to feel the absolute dread at the discussion ahead.

“So,” Soren said, leaning forward. “About Lydian.”

7

THE WORLDENDERS

“BEFORE I SAY anything about what I learned,” I said, “I want to say it doesn’t matter. No matter what he knew or saw, he did terrible things of his own volition to both of us. And what he did was wrong, even if he saw the future, he was still wrong to do what he did.”

I’d been repeating this over and over in my head ever since the end of my discussion with him, knowing that if I didn’t, it would be so easy to cross over into territory where I would blame myself and go back to the horrible self-loathing I’d been fighting to keep away. No matter what, he had no right.

Soren may not have been on the physical end of Lydian’s tortured visions, but he was one of the major parts that they circled around. The last known direct bloodline of the original Erlking, who bonded with the first incarnation of the stag, had now become Erlking himself, bonding with the newest incarnation of the stag, setting off the start of the instability that would cause the end of the world. Blood through blood.

That … that was a burden he was going to have to bear and carry on his shoulders, and I didn’t need to be the stag to know it wouldn’t be easy on him. I wished I could have lessened some of the pain he surely was about to feel.

Soren nodded in agreement. “Continue.”

I laced my hands together in my lap. “Lydian was always … off. I don’t know how off he was in the beginning, but literally everyone has been reassuring me that what happened to him wasn’t what made him a bad, evil person with a twisted sense of everything. It made that part of him worse.