I ripped away, my eyes wide with disbelief. “Sorry? Why the hell are you sorry?”
“For staying away from you for so long.” She looked up, sniffing back her sadness. “I wanted to see you the moment Jareth took me to that hospital. You were the only one I wanted to see, but...then I saw my dad again.” She looked up to Tony, who had his arm around Gemma, both of them crying and standing vigil around us. “And I knew that if I saw you before I accepted I was free...before I could learn how to be myself instead of what they made me...then I might never have had the courage to work through it on my own.” She sighed heavily, her eyes delving into mine. “I had to heal on my own...do you see? I let you keep me safe so many times in my youth, but this time...I had to do it on my own. I couldn’t put that pressure on you. We put so much pressure on you. All of us. All the time.” Her voice cracked. “What you did for us—”
I cupped her cheeks. “It’s me who should apologize. I wasn’t there for you for so many years. I gave you to a worser fate. I should never have—”
“It was that fate that showed me just how much you sheltered us. It taught me the level of pain you took for me.”
“A lesson you should never have had to learn.”
“Why? Because you deserved what they did to you?”
“No...but I knew what they wanted. It was already too late for me—”
“You sacrificed—”
“Just like you.”
She shook her head, her face twisting with disagreement. “I’ll never forgive myself for all those nights that I lay in bed—unsummoned and untouched—all because you took my place. So many nights, Kas—” Her fresh tears made mine react.
Fang whined again as I croaked. “But I failed, in so many ways. I let you get taken. I wasn’t there for all those years.”
“And I’m glad about that. If you’d been with us, you would’ve died. I know that. You would’ve kept sacrificing yourself until you couldn’t anymore.” Her eyes flew to Gem’s. “And you would never have found this.”
I shook my head, cursing her for her martyrdom. Didn’t she see? Her captivity the past decade was my fault. In our case, the devil we knew was better than the devil we didn’t. It was my fault. She was guilty of sleeping safely while I served on her behalf? Fuck me, I was guilty of falling in love and being happy, all while she still rotted in some monster’s hellhole.
“I’m so sorry, Quell.”
She shuddered, resting her forehead on mine. “No one knew what would happen that day. Or any day for that matter.”
“I thought Jareth said you ran. That you were the only one who got away that night.”
She flinched and tried to hide behind her hair—an old habit that twisted my heart. “I did run. I still hate myself for leaving everyone, but...they were screaming, and men were shouting, and I just bolted. I ran through the night. I ran until I was lost, and then panic filled me.” She licked her lips. “I started leaving a trail of ribbons.” Her face hardened. “You know that awful Mr. Jovie liked to dress me up like a doll...well, I used those ribbons from the pigtails he gave me and left a trail, tying them to branches, fully intending to make my way back to Fables and find you. I wanted to tell you what’d happened. I wanted to go save our family. Together.” Fresh tears fell from her dull hazel eyes. “But then...dawn broke, and they found me. I didn’t know what happened to the rest until Jareth came for me.”
Gem suddenly dropped to her knees, joining us in our protective huddle. “You said you left ribbons?” Her skin had gone white, her eyes wide and dilated. “What...what color was the satin, do you remember?”
Quell nodded, her nostrils flaring. If she was like me, she’d remember every detail. Panic tended to do that to a person. It was a curse, imprinting every little thing into permanent reminders on your psyche. “They were yellow.”
“Oh, God.” Gem fell onto her ass, shaking her head. “The ribbons tied in the trees were yours. It wasn’t the guy in the climbing forum who left them. I thought they were old. One was so brittle it disintegrated when I touched it.”
Quell locked eyes with my wife, an unfamiliar openness filling her face. Unlike me when meeting new people, she didn’t keep them at bay. She looked at Gem like an instant friend instead of a wary enemy.
And that filled me with fucking gratefulness.
The horror of Fables and our past faded a little as Fang licked my cheek, still keeping a careful eye on me with my emotions swinging from dark to light.