Trapped breath burned my throat when Scythe coughed and straightened. “I thought you were gone.” Slowly, he turned as though worried I wasn’t truly standing mere feet behind him. “I thought you’d…” He exhaled roughly and rubbed his large hand over his mouth and chin.

I’d never seen him look ill, so pale and worn that his eye looked like a jewel.

“I should be gone,” I whispered, my lungs too tight as I drew in shallow breaths.

“Not again,” he said, stepping closer. “You cannot leave like that again, Aster.”

My eyes blurred. “You touched her, and with the intent to hurt me. I want to stay, but if I’m not going to be treated any different than what awaits me in Wistensia, then I will be forced to leave, wolf, and I won’t look back.”

“Don’t,” he gritted. “Don’t say such things.” He stopped before me and clasped my cheek with a quaking hand, his tone softening and scratched. “You would reject me again?”

I retreated, meeting the stone of the cottage. “You’re not hearing me. You’re not understanding.” I couldn’t control it, the need to lay it all bare before him. He’d gone too far—we both had taken this fated connection that should have remained ignored far too far.

There was no taking any of it back now, so I let go. “That…” I gestured behind me in the direction of the Night Sea. “That I have barely survived, but you?” I shook my head, tears flooding. “I won’t. I know I won’t. And I’m so fucking tired of merely trying to survive.”

Seeming both stunned and horrified, his features hardened to stone. “What did he do to you?”

“I don’t want to speak of him. I want to know if you heard me.”

Scythe stepped forward. “You will tell me what he did—”

“Did you hear me or not?” I came close to shouting.

The intensity bled from his features, gentling them in a way I hadn’t glimpsed since that one week we’d spent together, as he observed the tears I couldn’t keep from spilling. “I don’t know what to do here, Aster. I’m so lost, it’s like I’m sinking. I feel sick with worry and anger and longing and all these fucking things I’ve never felt before, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do with any of it.”

I reached behind me for the stone, for something to steady me.

Scythe noticed, and he stilled before me. He tracked the tears over my cheeks with a pained expression. “I’m a monster,” he said, rough. “A beast without a single fucking clue, I know that, but I don’t want to hurt you.”