Her love, His curse

Welcome to book 2 in the Dragons of Blue Fire series!! This is Christian and Evangeline's story. I do hope you'll enjoy it, but don't expect a fairytale ;) Christian I had told myself for months that absence would be enough. I had told myself that silence was a kind of mercy—for her, for me, for whatever fragile dignity remained between us. I had listened to pleas and prayers and the soft, urgent voices of Gods and kin, and I had refused. I had refused because the bond that braided through my bones was not a blessing; it was a slow, grinding thing that hollowed me out. I had refused because she had taken my choice from me once, and I would not hand it back as a gift to be used. But the bond had teeth. It had a way of waking me in the small hours with a pain that was not only in my chest but in the marrow of my limbs. It bent me toward her like a compass needle toward iron. The ache had become a weather I could not escape: a constant, low thunder that made my hands shake and my sleep thin. I had learned to live with the ache, to bury it under work and distance and the hard, useful things of life. I had learned to answer the world with a clipped, careful voice. I had not learned to stop loving her. Evangeline Hadesdaughter. My mate. It’s not that I want her dead. I don’t. But after everything she put me through, I can’t forgive her. Yet something inside me nags at me to see her one last time. ‘It would be the first time you’d seen Evangeline in a year.’ My Lycan Varax huffs. Ragar, my Dragon, growls. ‘You need to see her, Christian. To say goodbye if nothing else. She hurt you, we know that, but don’t let her die believing you hate her. No matter what she did, Evangeline doesn’t deserve that.’ ‘Doesn’t she?’ I mumble. ‘No!’ Ragar yells. ‘Don’t be such a fuckin.g child, Christian! Grow up. You’re hurt, and you have every right to be angry. But this is ridiculous. I’m not telling you to claim her. I’m not even telling you to save her. But let her die in peace. She deserves that much.’ I blow out a breath and nod, but the nod feels like surrender. So, I leave without telling anyone. I wrap myself in a black cloak and pull the hood low until the world narrows to the breath in my lungs and the sound of my boots on the cold stones. The castle sleeps around me—lamplight gutters in distant windows, the sentries’ footsteps a slow metronome. I move like a shadow that has been practiced into being, a thing that belongs to the dark, though every step feels like a trespass. I snap my fingers and land in the one place I wish I didn’t have to see right now. The Underworld is hushed and thin with light, corridors smelling of old incense and colder things. I haven’t been inside Evangeline’s rooms in months. Not that I’d been in there often over the years; she hardly allowed it. But since all of this started, since I learned she’d been attacked at seventeen and poisoned, that it will kill her if I don’t give her my mark, I’ve stayed away. Evangeline lied to me for years. Instead of being honest and saying she pushed me away and pretended not to love me because she was afraid, she was cruel. What the hell was going through her head? Why did she ever think that lying to me was protecting me? Evangeline caused me pain for years! It was written before we were born that we were destined to be together. I’m ten years older than Evangeline, and I could understand why she thought it strange while she was young. She was six months from eighteen when she was attacked by a God who wanted her for their own. Evangeline refused, so he poisoned her in ways that not even the highest, most powerful Gods could save her. The only thing that will is my mark. I refused to help her because I was angry. I stayed away because I hadn’t wanted to see the truth of her decline with my own eyes. I hadn’t wanted to be the man who came to watch a Goddess die because he was too stubborn to help her. Now that choice sits on me like guilt, heavier than the anger ever was. But there’s a different urgency now: not to save her, not to bargain with fate, but to say goodbye in a way that’s mine. I need to see her and to speak the words that have been lodged in my throat for a year, before the poison takes her. I find it strange that no one is around. There are usually Demons all over this place. It’s even more unusual that her parents aren’t here. But the emptiness only makes the room feel more fragile, and that fragility makes my pulse quicken. I furrow my brow as I walk into her room undetected. Even her chamber is quieter than I had imagined. No attendants hover at the foot of the bed, no healers whisper over steaming bowls. The curtains are drawn back enough to let a sliver of moonlight fall across the bed, and in that pale line she looks smaller than the stories have ever allowed. The woman who had been a Goddess in the eyes of the world lies wrapped in linen, her skin the color of old paper, her hair a dark halo against the pillow. The runes carved into the headboard glow faint and tired, as if even the wards are exhausted. I stand in the doorway and let the sight of her settle into me. She looks like she’s already gone, so weak, so ill. For a long time, I don’t move. I think of the years she had spent pushing me away—of the cold words, the deliberate cruelty, the way she had made me the villain so she could be the martyr. I think of the nights I had spent imagining her in the arms of other Gods, of the times I had wanted to hate her so fiercely that the love would burn out. Instead, when she opens her eyes, the world narrows to the two of us and the sound of my own breath. Her eyes find me slowly, as if she were waking from a long, fevered dream. They’re the same eyes that had once held storms and command, but now they’re rimmed with salt and the small, raw surprise of someone who had not expected to be seen. “You’re here,” she whispers, and the sound is a thread that pulls at something inside me. There’s a tremor in her voice that makes me want to take her in my arms and break the world to keep her safe. But I don’t move. I have come to say goodbye, not to forgive her, and that refusal burns in my chest. She smiles, a small, fragile thing. “I see you so often in my dreams,” she says. “Sometimes I think I am only dreaming you. I know you’re not really here, but it is…nice to see you now.” She believes she’s hallucinating. That’s easy to see. I don’t correct her. There’s a mercy in letting her keep that small illusion. If she thinks this is a dream, then perhaps the sight of me will be gentler on whatever remains of her. ‘How can you just stand there and witness this?’ Ragar grumbles. ‘Why aren’t you going over there, pulling her into your arms and telling her everything will be okay?’ ‘Not now!’ I hiss. ‘Bastard!’ He hisses back. ‘One day, you’re gonna regret this.’ Maybe. “I’m sorry,” Evangeline says after a long breath. The apology is a stone dropped into a deep well; it makes ripples that reach me in places I thought were sealed. “For everything. I wish I could tell you this in real life. Maybe then…” Her lips quiver, but she blows out a breath, stopping herself from crying. “If I could turn back time, I would. I would do it all differently. I would have told you the truth. I wouldn’t have been so scared that you’d be sickened by what happened to me. I would trust you and your love for me.” Her voice breaks on the last words, and the break in it hits harder than any accusation. The words are simple and terrible. I rehearsed a thousand replies—anger, accusation, the cold calculus of duty—but the sound of her apology unspools something I have kept coiled for too long. I wanted to hate her for what she had done, to make her feel the same hollow ache I had carried. I wanted to be the man who could walk away and never look back. Instead, the apology makes my throat close, and every excuse I came with slips out of reach. “You’ll never see me again,” she says, and the certainty in her voice is like a blade. “But I’m glad I saw your image one last time. I missed you so much, Christian.” She says the words as if they’re a confession and a benediction. I feel the old, familiar ache—love and fury braided together—rise like a tide. I hate her for making me feel this way. I love her for being the only thing that could make me feel anything at all. She turns her head with an effort and fixes me with a look that is both pleading and proud. “Don’t live with regret, Christian. And when I’m gone,” she says, “don’t let guilt eat you. Don’t let them tell you that you should have saved me. I’m glad you said no.” The sentence lands like a stone. I had expected anger, bargaining, a plea for life. Instead, she offers me absolution—an absolution that’s also a punishment. “Never let anyone make you feel like you were wrong. You weren’t wrong, Christian. I would rather you hate me enough to let me die than save me and hate me while I live,” she says, and the honesty of it makes my jaw ache. I have no words. There’s nothing to say that would make the truth softer. She had chosen for me once; now she chose for herself. She had made me the villain in her story so she could be the martyr in hers. The cruelty of that choice had been a slow poison in my veins, and now she asked me to accept it as mercy. It is almost too much to bear. “My mom will tell you,” she says, voice thinning, “about the USB in my jewelry box. All my private thoughts—my letters, my confessions—are there. Maybe you’ll watch them. Maybe you won’t. I hope you will. It will explain things. Maybe then, you can forgive me just a little.” The mention of the small, mundane object—an ordinary drive hidden among trinkets—feels like a key left in a lock. Evangeline had always been meticulous about the things she hid. She had always kept her truths in places she thought no one would look. The idea that she left me a map to her mind makes something in me both hopeful and furious. Her eyes close, her lids fluttering like a curtain. “I will always love you,” she whispers as sleep takes her like a tide pulling her under. I stand here, a man who had come to say goodbye, and feel the weight of all the things unsaid press down. I should leave. I should close the door and let the night keep its secrets. I should honor the distance she had demanded and the choice I had made. But the drive calls to me with the small, human hunger of curiosity and the larger, more dangerous hunger of needing to know why the woman I love made me into a weapon against herself. I move to the vanity as if in a trance. The jewelry box sits there, carved with tiny runes and a mother-of-pearl lid. My fingers tremble when I lift it. Inside, among the rings and the thin chains, lies a small, black drive—no larger than a fingernail. I take it and feel the cold of it against my palm, the weight of her secrets in my hand. I push it into my pocket before I can think better of it. The act feels like theft and salvation at once. I have no right to take it. But I have every right to know what’s on it. The door opens before I can get out of here, and the sound of a voice—soft, stunned—cuts through the hush. Lycia, Evangeline’s mother, Hades’ mate, stands in the doorway, her face a map of hope and disbelief. Her mouth hangs open, her eyes wide as if she’s seen a ghost. “Christian?” she breathes, and the hope in her voice is a physical thing. She steps forward, the years of worry and prayer written in the lines at her eyes. “Are you here to—” I don’t answer. I can’t. The drive in my pocket feels alive, a pulse that matches the quickness of my own heart. Lycia’s hope is a blade I can’t bear to see turned. So, without a word, I snap my fingers. The world folds like paper. Lycia’s expression freezes for a heartbeat—hope, confusion, then the dawning of something else—and then I’m gone. The snap is a small, ugly trick, a coward’s escape. I know it was cruel. I knew it would sting her like salt. But I need time. I need the dark and the quiet and the small, terrible privacy of the night to watch what Evangeline left me. As I run through the corridors of Blue Fire Castle, the drive heavy in my pocket, the bond throbs like a second heartbeat. I went to say goodbye, and instead I stole a piece of her. I have no idea what I’ll find on that small, black rectangle. I only know that whatever is on it could change the shape of the thing I have been carrying for a year. Outside, the moon is a thin coin. The air through the windows bites at my face and makes me feel alive in a way the court never did. I wrap my cloak tighter and move like a man who had been given a single, dangerous gift: the truth.