Chapter 721: Please Don’t Give Up On Me Yet

River stepped around Lucian.

The stepping was quiet, her white hair catching the red of the sunset and turning the color of gold.

"Tristan. I am sorry we left before we woke. It was my decision, not Lucian’s. I made that decision because the longer I stayed, the more the corruption spread." Her voice cracked. "I am sorry. Please, let us pass through and return home. You should be resting."

The apology hit him somewhere below his ribs and stayed there. His expression broke for half a second before he rebuilt it.

"You left because I was getting worse." His voice was hoarse. "And I got worse because you left. Do you see the problem with your logic, River? The corruption does not care about distance. It cares about resistance. And the only thing I am resisting harder than the fated tie right now is the urge to cross this road and carry you back to the palace myself. Please, come home with me. Give me more time to fix this."

River shook her head once.

"Tristan, you need a healer. You are dying on this road. Right now. In real time. In front of me. The darkness is spreading and I need you to see that. Please."

"Then so be it. It can eat every last piece of me until there is nothing left but the man who loves you because that is the only part of me that was ever real, River. That is the only part I am fighting to keep, and I will fight for it on this road with black veins and borrowed time until my body stops letting me. And when it stops, I will still be choosing you, and the Goddess can watch."

Tristan dismounted. His boots hit the stone and the landing was heavier than it should have been, the weight of a man whose body was fighting a war on two fronts and losing both.

River’s hand flew to her mouth, stopping a sob that had already come out enough.

Tristan crossed the distance between them. Not with the stride of a prince. Not with the authority of a commander. He crossed it the way a man crosses a room to reach the person he cannot live without, one foot in front of the other, each step costing more than the last, each step paid for willingly.

"I’m not angry." His voice broke on the second word and he let it break because the breaking was honest and honesty was the only currency he had left. "I’m scared. Come home with me. Please."

Fin stood between the two armies and watched a Fae prince walk towards a woman with dark veins eating his face and love eating everything else. "This situation is absolutely fucked," he said to no one. He could see Lucian Moon standing there breaking, he could feel River breaking, and he could see a Fae prince who had chosen this woman in every possible way and was still being told that wasn’t enough and still fighting for it. This was truly, cosmically fucked, and he wasn’t sure what the correct answer was.

"I left because I want you to live," River managed with a hiccup. "The corruption stops when I am gone, and it advances when I am here. The mathematics of that are so simple and so devastating that I cannot argue with them. I am so sorry that my presence in your life is the variable that is killing you."

"Stop saying that. You let Vesper get into your head. You are NOT the variable."

"That’s not true. I am because you will always choose me over her. That’s what is feeding this."

"No. Vesper is feeding this with dark magic. Fated ties don’t do this naturally. You know I am right, River. Don’t give up on it yet. Give me a few more weeks to solve it."

River turned her head away from him. "Tristan, it’s been a few weeks and I am drowning alone and am not able to handle it."

"Let me handle it."

River shook her head. "You cannot handle it."

"River, look at me." He waited for her eyes before speaking. "When you say ’it’ do you mean Vesper or me dying?"

"All of it, Tristan. I am struggling with her presence and being the obstacle of your destiny, the other woman in a situation that should be straightforward. I need you to let me go. Please."

He reached for her hands. She let him take them. Her fingers were cold, and his were trembling.

Next to her, Lucian’s nostrils flared once. His jaw was locked so tight the muscles in his neck stood out like bridge cables. Through the matebond, River’s grief was a tsunami with no shoreline, toward a break that was going to take everything with it.

Every instinct was commanding him to move, to intervene, to put his body between his brother’s self-destruction and his mate’s collapsing composure.

"Tristan, please." River’s voice broke on the second syllable of his name, the please arriving in two pieces that didn’t fit back together. "Please go back. Please let the healers help you. Please honor the fated tie so the veins recede and the green comes back and the man I love survives long enough for me to know he’s alive somewhere in the world, even if the somewhere is far from me. I’m asking you to choose life and try. If not for yourself, then for me, Lucian, and father."

"I am choosing life. Come back. I know you think this saves me. It doesn’t. Nothing saves me without you. Come home. Let me find another way. I will figure out Vesper. I am not promising it will be overnight. But I will spend every waking hour searching for a way to break this tie that doesn’t cost us each other. Just come home and let me hold you tonight." He knelt in front of her, still holding her hands. "Don’t leave, baby. I’m still alive and here."

He was begging, and the begging sounded nothing like a prince and everything like a man who was holding hands with his entire world.

"You were six when I found you. You were sitting on a rock by the river, and you were so small, and you were shivering. And I looked at you and I thought, that’s her. I didn’t know what it meant. But something in me knew, River, something deeper than language, deeper than thought, deeper than anything the Goddess has ever put inside me, and it said, that girl. That girl is yours. Go to her. And I haven’t been the same man since."

He swallowed. The swallowing was effort.

"I know the corruption is real. I know the veins are climbing. I know Vesper exists and the fated tie exists and the Goddess has a plan that doesn’t include us. I know you are trying to save me. I know you think walking away is love."

Tears were welling in his eyes as he spoke.

"And maybe it is love. Maybe it’s the bravest kind. But I am on my knees on a road begging you to let me love you the only way I know how, which is beside you, which is next to you, which is holding your hand while the dark comes, and if the dark takes me then at least the last thing I felt was your fingers in mine and the last thing I saw was your face and the last thing I knew was that I chose right."

His voice cracked. Broke. Rebuilt itself on the only foundation left.

"Please. Let me hold you. Don’t give up on me yet. Come home. I love you and I have loved you since before I knew the word and you have my word as a man that I will fix this and make things right."