So she teleported.
Meant to go to the nearest portal, her only way of entering Hell since she couldn’t teleport there directly like Hartt could, but only made it a few feet.
Hartt stared wide-eyed at where she had been and then his gaze snapped to her. Relief filled it, his chest heaving in a sigh as he saw she hadn’t gone far.
The only reason she hadn’t left him was because she still wanted answers. She told herself that on repeat as she faced him again, as she tipped her chin up and stared him down, waiting for him to talk.
He sucked down a breath that stretched his wet black knee-length jacket across his chest and exhaled hard.
“Iolanthe is the reason I am an assassin now.” He glanced back over his shoulder in the direction of Underworld. If he meant to leave it at that, he was going to find himself on the receiving end of another burning touch from her, because she wanted the truth. The whole truth. No matter how ugly it was. He sighed again and rubbed a hand over his hair, tousling the wet strands, and then ran his palm down his face. “Millennia ago, our parents decided we should marry. I courted her and thought things were going well… until she left me at the altar on the day of our binding ceremony.”
“Is that a mating thing?” She couldn’t hold back that question, needed to say something so she could ignore the squirming sensation in her stomach, one that made her want to tell him to stop so she could spare herself the pain.
He frowned again. “Mating? No. Iolanthe isn’t my fated one. Kyter is her fated mate.”
But he had loved her anyway, and judging by the look in his eyes, the pain that brewed there, what she had done had hurt him deeply.
“You wanted to marry her.” She wished she hadn’t put that out there, wanted to take it back but he answered before she could do it.
“Yes. I wanted to marry her.”
“Because you love her.” She fought the urge to take another step back or teleport before he could answer that one.
She needn’t have worried, because he dodged the question.
“I left the elf kingdom shortly afterwards, and wandered Hell, looking for a purpose. I met Fuery when I returned to my home to see my family and we ended up in danger.” His breath hitched as pain glittered in his eyes and she refused to feel bad for him. Something which became increasingly difficult as his jaw tensed and he looked as if someone had just ripped his heart out, and that feeling she’d had that he had lost members of his family too swept through her again. “A fallen angel attacked the small hamlet where I grew up, a short distance from a farming village. He used some kind of enchantment to seal the area, stopping us from teleporting, and wiped out the other two families. The bastard butchered them. I tried to convince my parents and brother to leave, that I would distract the fallen angel while they ran for it. My mother was terrified, too scared to move. Before I could convince her, the fallen angel burst into our house.”
She wanted to ask what happened then, but held her tongue, clinging to her mood, refusing to let the tragedy of his past soften her heart. Even when it was. The damned thing betrayed her and turned to mush in her chest as she looked at him, as she saw the pain in his eyes, hurt she felt reflected in her as she thought about her own family and how she had lost them. The two of them weren’t so different after all.
She growled at that.
No. They were different. Vastly different in one aspect at least.
She would never pursue someone else while she was in love with another man.
“I tried to stop him, but he was too strong. He struck me so hard I almost passed out, sent me slamming into the wall. He cut down my father first… and then turned on my mother. My brother tried to run rather than help her. He didn’t get far. I watched my mother die… couldn’t muster enough strength to stop the male. I thought I was done for.” He looked from her to the sky, closed his eyes as rain fell on his face, and she knew why he was doing it. Like her, he didn’t want someone to see him crying. Her traitorous heart tried to soften again. She hardened it instead. Hartt sighed. “That’s when Fuery appeared. Crazy bastard fought the fallen angel and I ended up finding the courage to help him. Fuery saved me and with all of my ties to the elf kingdom gone, I left that land with him. My journey with Fuery led to me becoming an assassin.”
She nodded as she took all of that in, as she clung to her anger and her hurt, and boiled everything he had told her down and accidentally omitted the sad parts that had almost turned her heart to mush.
Iolanthe dumping him at the altar had brought him to a dark place in his life, and that had led to him making some equally dark life choices. She fudged over the fallen angel and losing his family, tried to shut it out of her head, even when a tiny voice somewhere in the deepest darkest depths of her heart quietly screamed at her that they were more alike than she had thought possible.
He had lost his family too.
It had been torn from him just as hers had been ripped from her.
“So… let me get this straight, because I want to be clear about it. You got your heart broken by the love of your life and turned into a murderous psychopath. That’s good to know.”
His face darkened.
“It did not happen overnight.” Regret crossed his features and she didn’t need to be psychic to know he wanted to take back what he had said. “I’m not a psycho—”
He doubled over and braced his hands against his knees, breathing hard.
“What’s wrong?” She lifted her hand to reach for him but he raised his head. Black eyes locked with hers. Fear skittered through her and she backed off a step. “Are you going murderous psychopath on me again?”
He growled at her, ratcheting that fear up another notch as her mind supplied a horrific replay of how he had turned on her.
How he had tried to kill her the last time his eyes had been like that.
Teleporting was probably the wisest thing to do, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave him as he panted and gasped for air, as he visibly trembled and she sensed pain in him, and fear.
“No,” he gritted and his fingers tightened against his knees. “Fuery is having a bad day.”
“Fuery is having a bad day? What’s that got to do with your condition?” She eased back another step when he unleashed an unholy snarl and his nails became short claws.
He sucked down a breath and then another, panting as he closed his eyes. “We’re bound. When the darkness takes him, I feel it too… and vice versa.”
“What possessed you to do such a stupid thing?” She had witnessed the darkness in him and the darkness in Fuery, could only imagine how they fed that corruption in each other.
“I owed him,” he bit out, wheezed in another breath and growled through clenched teeth. “It was the only way to save him.”
By sacrificing himself.
It dawned on her that Hartt hadn’t been tainted when he had bound himself to Fuery, but he had become corrupted in the years that bond had existed, had been slowly destroying himself in the hope it would save his friend. Reckless fool. Noble idiot.
Her heart softened towards him but only for a single beat, before something else dawned on her. If Hartt couldn’t let his friend go, then he would never let his feelings for Iolanthe go either.
Those feelings had remained alive inside him for centuries without her by the sounds of things.