Acotar and Tog [Discontinued, Will be deleted]

The Prince of Deliverance

For weeks his emotions had been a jumbled mess. He was on a pendulum, from tearing her to shreds and then rescuing her. At one point he bit the girl and then smiled a true smile for the first time in centuries.

That damn girl.

However the past weeks were nothing in comparison to the past twelve hours. Significant words had been said both to him and by him and each one shook him to his very core. The lion and the old man had seen something in the girl. Everyone seemed to have seen something past the spoiled cowardly princess he saw.

He did not seek out the girl, maybe he was a coward, but he needed time and all they would do was scream. He paced the fortress grounds. He could not filter the cacophony of words racing through his mind.

Hope. You just left me. let go. Ashryver. Discredit her. Love. There is nothing that I can give you. Abandoned. Thank you for saving me. Coward. Nothing I want to give you. Carranam. Destroyed. Because I made a promise. A promise to my friend that I would see her kingdom freed. Princess. You are nothing to me. Perhaps Deanna and Mala weren’t always rivals. Prince. I do not care. Because she is dead, and I am left with my worthless life! Oh, you’d better run now. Know exactly how it’s done. Assassin. Lyria. Aelin. Just live. A better world.

His body brought him to the ruins of the temple. He felt a warmth that he had not felt since the skinwalkers. He kneeled towards the sun and before he could even utter a prayer, his mind started to focus as the wind whispered, Let go.

He was so sure he knew the message Gavriel was trying to give him during the early hours of the morning, but now he questioned what Gavriel meant. Did he mean to let go of his past or his need for control? Maybe both, as they were now intertwined.

He could let go of the pain, for himself, for Lyria, for the girl, he could let go.

She's the first person to reach you, let her.

The lion was right, she had somehow reached him. If he let go, if he released the control he had, would she pull him out of the darkness? Did he deserve it? Could he live outside the darkness?

He almost laughed, the prince of ice and wind prayed to the goddess of sunlight and fire. Even in his prayers he turned to a source of light.

He would learn to let go.

If I sit in the darkness of my loss, I discredit her memory, I reject the love she gave me.

Was he disgracing the love Lyria had for him? He knew she would hate what he had become. Even with his failure, she would have never wanted this life for him. This was not even a life, this was survival.

He had spent years focused on his shame. Wanting to shoulder the pain and the scars as proof that he was paying for the sins he'd committed. In his payment he was discrediting her love of him.

No expectations, no titles, no assumptions.

All of these ideals were getting in the way. He had expectations and was disappointed every single time she failed to meet them. So he pushed her harder, pushed her down.

He grew frustrated with the princess. He expected her to behave like a princess. In the end it was only a title, not who she was. She stopped being a princess ten years ago when her kingdom fell on its knees to a bastard king.

He held back because he was bloodsworn, a commander, a prince.

The other title he feared for what it meant. His magic was attracted to that wildfire, danced in his veins every time she used it. He knew the bond they shared, but for now they didn't need it. He needed to train her before they reached that point. They needed to trust each other.