ACOTAR One~shots [Discontinued, Will be deleted]

Don't Say You Ever Loved Me

When I left Rhys, I hadn’t had time to develop a plan, to think about what I wanted, what I needed, how I really felt about him and what I had learned from the Suriel. Desperation had fueled me, and now I found myself isolated, in a cabin, in a place I wasn’t sure how to leave. Mor had delivered on my request to take me far away, and I hadn’t cared enough to ask her where she had left me. All I could do now was hope that she followed through on my request to keep my location from Rhys. At least, for the time being.

On the first day, I was angry. I wasn’t sure that I could call what Rhys had done a betrayal, but after everything that Tamlin had done, I tried to wrap my head around the idea that Rhys would hide information like this from me. That he could know, had known, for months, that we were mates, without saying a word. I felt like I had always had a choice with him, but I struggled to reconcile this with the fact that he kept vital information from me. What else might have he kept from me, in the name of protection?

I had never known that marriage or love or any of it would be a possibility, for me. My plans had been to live with my father, my sisters comfortably married and me with enough time to paint; a partner for myself had never crossed my mind. It was never something I wanted, unlike Elain, who dreamed of what her wedding dress would look like from the time she could walk. Nor was I like Nesta, who thought of making an advantageous match, before our change in social station had put an end to those dreams. Those plans were now back on track, since Tamlin had given them the resources to make it so. But me?

No, I had never wanted to tie myself to another for the rest of my life. And now the Cauldron was here telling me that it was fated, that I had no choice.

Maybe I shouldn’t have walked away, and I wondered if part of my reaction was a rejection. This thing in my chest that connected our souls was out of my control, and I’d had precious little of that my entire life. Just for once, I wanted to make a decision that was about myself, rather than pleasing or taking care of someone else. And at the moment, that decision was to put distance between myself and my mate. Even if I now regretted every second we were spending apart, sick with worry over whether he was healing, a nagging fear that he wouldn’t forgive me for leaving him like that.

When Mor came back on the second day, I expected most of what she had to tell me. She didn’t push - I knew that our friendship was valued by both of us, and wouldn’t be served by her acting as Rhys’s mouthpiece - but all the same, her agenda was clear. To make sure I was ok, to gently nudge me in the direction of acceptance. What she didn’t know was that my acceptance was inevitable. It was really all in Rhys’s hands, now, whether he would ask for the forgiveness I was ready and willing to give.

The fact was that I did love Rhys. I had struggled against the idea, feeling as if it were wrong, as if I were a horrible, despicable person for daring to be attracted to or even care for someone other than Tamlin. That Tamlin’s love turned out to be… insufficient, was not enough to alleviate the guilt I felt at loving one while living with another. Did I love them both at the same time? Perhaps. Admitting it might mean that others would revile me. The idea that you can love two people at once is seen as a betrayal, and I realized almost immediately how naive, how idealistic this notion could be. The idea of still loving Tamlin in the same way I had before also seemed laughable. And yet that was so at odds with the stories I heard growing up, before my mother passed. To find myself no longer in love with Tamlin while desperately wanting to be with Rhys, how could it be anything other than a betrayal of what I had felt and everything I believed about love to find that in fact, love can change, fading away completely?

But it was a truth that I needed to come to terms with. To forgive myself for. I had discovered that being in love with someone comes with a certain lack of control. Whether it is the person we love or the way in which we conduct ourselves, the choices life presents us with and the decisions we make, love has a way of making all the rules go to hell. I had always known I was adaptable, but this was much more difficult and infinitely more complicated than learning how to use a new weapon or hunt in a unfamiliar environment.