Luna Priestess

Rhys's Silence

The Moon broke the next morning, and the whole pack house woke up like it was hungover.

Wolves who’d been sharp and restless for days moved slowly now, quiet, a little embarrassed with each other in that way people get after a night they don’t want to talk about.

Breakfast was subdued. Nobody looked anybody in the eye for very long.

I didn’t sleep much. I kept replaying the hallway, Kaius’s hand on my jaw, Rhys’s face when he found us.

By the time the sun was up, I’d made a decision, which was that I needed to talk to Rhys before one more day went by pretending last night hadn’t happened.

I found him out by the stables, brushing down his horse like the animal had personally wronged him.

“Hey,” I said.

He didn’t stop brushing. “Hey.”

“Can we talk?”

“We’re talking.”

“Rhys.”

He set the brush down, finally, and turned to face me, and he looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with the Moon.

Tired like he’d been carrying something heavy for a long time, and his arms were finally giving out.

“I meant what I said last night,” he told me. “I’m not going to tell anyone.”

“I know. Thank you. But that’s not what I want to talk about.”

“Then what?”

I took a breath. “What were you going to say? On the balcony, before the horn went off. You said there was something you should’ve told me a long time ago.”

Something crossed his face, quick, like he’d hoped I’d forgotten. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“It matters to me.”

“Does it?” His voice had an edge I wasn’t used to hearing from him.

“Because from where I’m standing, you’ve spent the last two weeks nearly getting killed by your own Sight over a man you met two weeks ago, and I’ve spent fourteen years standing next to you saying nothing, and I don’t think either one of those things has room in it for what I was going to say.”

“Rhys.”

“I love you.” He said it fast, like ripping off a bandage.

“I have for years. Since we were kids, probably, though I didn’t have a word for it back then. I never said anything because you were training to be a Priestess who wasn’t allowed to want anyone, and telling you would’ve just been one more thing for you to carry that you never asked for. So I didn’t. I just stayed close. Told myself that was enough.”

I couldn’t say anything. My chest had gone tight, guilt and something else tangled together so badly I couldn’t tell them apart.

“And now,” he went on, quieter,

“The one rule that made staying quiet make sense doesn’t even apply to you anymore, does it. Your Sight’s gone. Your Vow’s cracking. Everything I told myself for fourteen years just stopped being true, and the timing couldn’t be worse, because the second it stopped being true, you looked at somebody else.”

“Rhys, I didn’t choose this.”

“I know that.” He rubbed a hand over his face.

“I’m not angry at you, Ly. I want you to hear that. I’m not standing here blaming you for something that happened to you, not something you went looking for. I just...” He stopped, jaw working.

“I needed you to know. Even if it doesn’t change anything. Even if you walk away right now and go straight back to him. I couldn’t keep carrying it and watch this happen at the same time.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything.” He tried to smile, and it didn’t really work.

“I’m not asking you to feel something you don’t feel. I know what this is. I’ve always known what this is. I just wanted it said out loud, once, before everything gets more complicated than it already is.”

We stood there a while, neither of us talking, the horse shifting behind him, the morning going on around us like the world hadn’t just cracked open a little.

“I care about you,” I finally said. “You know that. You’ve always known that.”

“I know.” His voice had gone rough. “That’s not the same thing, and we both know it, so let’s not pretend it is.”

“Rhys...”

“It’s fine, Lyra.” He picked the brush back up, turned away from me, back to the horse, and something about the set of his shoulders told me the conversation was over, whether I wanted it to be or not.

“I told you I’d keep your secret, and I meant it. That doesn’t change because of what I just said. If anything, it’s more true now. I’m not going to be the reason you get hurt. Not by the Council, not by anyone.”

“Even though it costs you something.”

He glanced back at me, and for one second, the mask slipped, and I saw exactly how much it was costing him, plain as day on his face.

“Especially because it costs me something,” he said. “That’s kind of the whole point of loving someone, Ly. You do the hard thing anyway.”

He turned back to the horse, and I understood I was being dismissed, gently, the way he’d always done everything with me, gently, even when it must have hurt him not to be.

I walked away because I didn’t know what else to do, and the whole way back to the pack house I felt his words sitting heavy in my chest, right alongside the memory of Kaius’s hand on my jaw, and I hated, more than anything, that I couldn’t seem to put either one of them down.