Page 191 of Sword & Shadow
Instead, she lifted her chin. “Feelings play no role in this decision, Thom.”
“Then what does?” he demanded.
That was a question Evylin couldn’t bring herself to answer.
A slow drizzle began, rustling the leaves in a chorus of patters and slaps. In the rising temperatures, neither wore their cloaks. The sudden onslaught of rain began to drench them, but they didn’t move, locked in a battle of wills.
Thom glared at her with something resembling frustration. “Do you love him?” he demanded.
“No,” she said without giving herself the chance to think.
An embittered smirk came to Thom’s face. “You’ve always been a terrible liar, Evie.”
“I’m not lying.”
“Fine,” he said apathetically. “You don’t love him. All the things you said before were the words of some other lovesick sap. You’re going to leave Jonn, and you won’t be unhappy because you don’t care about him. Works for me.”
Evylin rolled her eyes. “What do you want from me? Do you want me to be with you or to be with Jonn?”
“Wouldyou ever be with me?” he asked, brow raised with a disbelieving arch.
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.” He shook his head. “I don’t care what you do, Evylin. Be with him or leave him—whatever you want. But take it from someone who’s screwed up everything good he’s ever had: You’ll regret every moment of your life if you walk away from him.”
She stared at him, every argument she could think of caught in her chest next to the wound she’d inflicted on herself when she chose to leave her husband.
Thom dipped his head lower, deliberately meeting her eyes. “There’s a reason I resent my brother, Evie. It’s because he’s the best man this world has, and we can never hope to deserve him.” He scoffed cynically. “Who wouldn’t be resentful? How isanyonesupposed to compete with that?”
Evylin turned away, not wanting to hear the truth of what she’d given up.
“Reject me if you like,” Thom said in a quiet, self-loathing tone. “I deserve it. But he doesn’t.”
Then he turned away and left her there.
Evylin stood in the cold rain, her hair and clothes soaked. Droplets trickled down her cheeks like tears. Her fingers twisted her rings absentmindedly. No, Deckard didn’t deserve her rejection. And perhaps she should take that into consideration, but...
She squeezed her eyes shut around the emotion welling within. She’d cried too much over the past month. Enough tears to fill the whole ocean. Now, her body was hollow, worn ragged under the weight of long-suppressed grief.
No, Deckard didn’t deserve her rejection. But neither did he deserve a wife who couldn’t love him as well as he deserved. Evylin meant what she’d told Ilain last night. She had no love left to give. Her heart was sundered irrevocably. What could she offer any man when every moment she questioned her very desire to exist?
“The world isn’t what I thought it’d be.”Evylin’s words from months ago drifted back into her mind along with Hewitt’s deep, growling voice.
“What are you looking for in the world, Evie?”
“I don’t know,”she’d admitted.“But I can’t accept that life is as simple and...boringas this. There has to be something else out there. Some other reason to live.”
“What would be reason enough to live?”
Evylin didn’t have any more answers now than she did then.“There must be more...Lifemust be more.”
Yet, here she stood in her imagination of “more”—the thrill of adventure—and it felt immeasurably like “less.”
Evylin stared at her rings. What would be reason enough to live when everything inevitably ended in death? There was no escaping that unavoidable fact. Hewitt died on a grand adventure. Ryen died in an accidental fire. Nowhere was safe, not out in the world and not back in Whickam Village. She couldn’t run from death; she couldn’t escape loss. It followed her everywhere she went.
Releasing her rings, Evylin stared into the dimming forest trees.
“What would be reason enough to live?”
