Chapter 178 The End Is Here 2

Chapter 178 The End Is Here 2
Ryn POV

The messenger comes from the human world three days after, and I know before he opens his mouth that it's about Vael, because there's no one else left there who'd send for me.

He's a thin, nervous man, one of the ones who carry word across the border for coin, and Eldridge brings him to me himself rather than let him roam the court. He bows too low and twists his cap in his hands before telling me his message in a trembling voice. I can also hear how his teeth chatters.

Vael is having the baby. It's gone wrong, or it's going hard, the midwife isn't sure it'll be simple. And in the middle of it Vael has been asking for me. Begging, the man says, then catches himself.

She wants her sister. She needs help only the people across the border can give, the same help that saved the king, she's heard what my blood can do, what my fire can do. She's frightened, in pain and she's calling for me.

Callum sent this man with his own coin to bring me, because Vael asked and Callum can't say no to her when she's frightened.

I let him finish as I stand there in the chamber with my own hand on my own stomach, my own child five months grown inside me, and I feel something I didn't expect.

That's the thing. I don't feel anything. Not the feeling to want to save her, not the anxiety or even the love I had for her. Wherever it was, it's gone, so quiet I almost mistake it for grief.

"So she's asking for me," I say plainly.

"Begging, my lady. She said..." The man swallows. "She said to tell you she's sorry. That she'd take it all back if she could. That she knows what she did and she's sorry and she needs her sister."

A year ago that would have undone me. Those were the exact words I spent twenty-one years starving for, and here they are, but this time, they land on me like rain on a roof. I hear them. But they don't get in.

Because I know what they are now. She's sorry when she needs something. She loves me when there's a use for me. The sorry isn't for the twenty-one years she emotionally blackmailed me or the death she handed me or the doorstep in the snow.

The sorry is for this, for the moment she's in pain and frightened that's when she remembers that she has a sister whose blood and fire can fix things.

The apology arrived precisely when she needed me, and not one day sooner, the way it always has.

And I'm carrying a child now. That's the thing that's changed, the thing that occupies the place where the pull used to be. I made a promise in the dark, days ago, that this baby would be wanted in a way I never was, that it would never be made small or blamed for how it arrived or handed something that wasn't its to carry.

I meant it. And I can't keep that promise to my child and go running back across a border every time the woman who used my whole childhood decides she needs me again.

You can't teach a child it's worth more than that while you're proving with your own feet that you're worth less.

If I go, I go back to being the spare. The foundling who shows up when called and shrinks when she's there and thanks them for the privilege. I'd be teaching my child, before it's even born, that that's what love looks like, that you go to the people who hurt you the moment they crook a finger, that being needed is the same as being loved. It isn't.

Jasmin tried to tell me that in the clinic in hell and I wasn't ready to hear it. I'm ready now.

"Tell her," I say, and the man straightens. "Tell her I hope the baby comes safe. I mean that. I'm not cruel and I won't pretend I want her to suffer." I keep my voice steady. "But I'm not coming. Not for this, not for anything. The midwife will do what midwives do, and Callum will be there. That's why she has a husband. She told me she now has a home and a child coming, which is more than she ever wanted me to have so she'll manage without me. She always could. She just never wanted to."

The man's eyes go wide. He didn't expect this. Nobody expects me to say no.

"My lady, she's in a bad way, they say it could..."

"I heard you. And I'm sorry for it, truly. But she didn't send for her sister because she missed me. She sent because she needs the fire girl. There's a difference, and I spent twenty-one years not knowing it, and I know it now." I fold my hands over the child that's mine, more mine than anything has ever been. "I have my own to think of. I won't leave it, not even for a day, to go and be useful to a woman who only remembers I exist when there's a use. That door's closed. Tell her I closed it gently. But tell her it's closed."

He doesn't argue again. He bows, twists his cap, and Eldridge sees him out. Once alone, I stand in the chamber afterward and wait for the guilt to come, because the guilt always comes, the guilt is the price I've paid my whole life for the crime of putting myself first.

This time, it doesn't come.

I keep waiting for it, the way you keep pressing a tooth that should hurt, and there's just nothing there, and slowly I understand that the guilt was hers too.

She put it in me, the same way she put the smallness in me, a leash that pulled tight every time I tried to walk away. And somewhere in the last six months, between a cellar, a clinic, a kitchen and a king who chose me freely, the leash came off. I didn't even notice it go.

I hope Vael's baby comes safe. I really do. I hope she's happy, I hope she raises that child better than she helped raise me, although I suspect she won't, but that's not mine to carry anymore.

I put my hand on my stomach and I make the promise again, out loud this time, the way I did in the dark.

"You're so wanted," I tell it. "Always. No matter what you can do for anyone. I and your father can't wait to meet you."

And then I close the door on the human world, the last door, the one I crossed worlds to keep open, and I don't feel the loss I braced for.

I just feel free.