Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 120029 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 600(@200wpm)___ 480(@250wpm)___ 400(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120029 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 600(@200wpm)___ 480(@250wpm)___ 400(@300wpm)
And now Nate doesn’t even want to see me.
A sob tears out of my throat when I can’t stand it anymore. My mind is fixated on every second I spent with him, and every bad decision. How I bound his shadow to mine because I thought it was so obvious he’d want to be promised to me.
I thought it was romantic, maybe even noble to bind his shadow to mine so he would always have a place beside me. So he would never have to doubt where he belonged.
But instead of asking what he wants, I claimed him like he’s an uncharted island, not a person with a will of his own.
I press my palms into my eyes with a helpless sob. My chest aches as if something inside it is trying to claw its way out. I can't remember the last time I broke down like this.
What kind of knight does this? What kind of protector makes the person he swore to guard feel trapped?
Nate trusted me. Even after everything he endured, he trusted me enough to fall asleep in my arms at the tavern. To let me touch him. To believe me when I said I would help him.
But I didn’t do it fast enough.
As I sink into the dark well of memories, the smell of the dungeon hits me first. Rot, blood, damp stone.
Nate chained like some discarded animal in the corner of the cell.
My stomach twists violently as memories of his abused body flash through my mind. His ribs so prominent under the skin. Bruises layered over bruises in sick shades of purple and yellow. His lip split, his cheeks hollowed, his beautiful dark eyes sunken so deep in their sockets I barely recognized him.
The man I was dreaming about, the man whose laugh I fell for and whose mouth I tasted not so long ago—he was gone, replaced by this hollow, starved creature who looked up at me as if he wasn’t sure whether I was even real.
I remember the way his body felt when I lifted him. The grown man who should have been a solid weight in my arms felt like little more than bones wrapped in skin. His head lolled against my shoulder, and for one sickening heartbeat I thought I arrived in time to carry a corpse out of that place.
And all I could think was: I came too late.
Too late to stop it.
Too late to protect him.
Too late to deserve the way his fingers still clutched weakly at my armor.
My throat tightens again as another sob forces its way out. I press the heel of my hand to my mouth, trying to muffle it, but the sound escapes anyway, raw and humiliating in the quiet library.
Because while he starved in chains, wondering why I never came, I was eating pie.
It’s sickening.
I don’t deserve my soft bed and comfortable rooms. I don’t deserve the love of my family, nor a single smile from my beloved after I failed him so completely.
I’m a fraud.
I get the faintest rustle of warning before my sister’s voice disturbs the silence like a chime. “Tristan?”
I try to rub the tears away in panic, but I can’t seem to do that fast enough, and the sobs just keep coming.
“I’m… f-fine,” I utter even though I’m clearly the opposite of that.
A soft sigh, and then she comes closer, like she always would when I was still a child and she—a young lady. But I’ve since grown out of the need for coddling. I’m a grown man. A prince of the realm. A knight. But when my sister sinks to the floor next to me and puts her arm around my shoulders, tears flow even harder, and I let her pull my head closer
“Oh, Tristan… what is causing this?”
Words pour out of me, because who else would I be able to tell any of this? “H-he hates me, and I d-deserve it. I failed h-him. I got to the tower yesterday, and I found him all broken and hurt. Gloombane tortured him, Sabine. For two months. For two months he suffered so terribly, and I’m the one who left him there. I assured him everything would be fine. I promised him.”
Sabine’s quiet, and her silence feels like yet another accusation. I am a fraud. I am not worthy even of the cloak on my back, and I can’t blame Nate if he chooses to never speak to me again.
I wouldn’t have.
How foolish was it to hope he could forget all his suffering and move on to become my Dark Companion?
“It’s not your fault, Tristan,” Sabine tries, rubbing my shoulder with her soft hand. “You couldn’t have known. There was no reason to doubt Captain Gloombane’s character.”
Only there was. And I ignored it.
“After I pulled Nate out of the river, Gloombane saw Nate’s shadow and told me to throw him back in. I pressured him to—”