Page 26 of His to Destroy

I don’t announce myself.

I just stand there and watch her like a man at the altar of something holy and forbidden.

When she finally looks up, I expect the sharpness. The cool eyes. The steel.

Instead, she smiles—small, reluctant, tired.

“You’re up early,” she says.

“You’re beautiful in the morning.”

She stiffens, her walls snapping back into place. “Don’t.”

“I’m not playing a game, Almeria.”

“Then don’t say things like that.”

“Why? Because they’re true?”

“Because I don’t want them to be,” she says, and turns back to her book.

And somehow, that honesty cuts deeper than if she’d just walked away.

Luca grows more attached to me by the day and I’m more than excited about that. He’s grown to become the best part of my day on some bad days.

He falls asleep on my chest during movie nights. He runs to greet me when I walk through the front doors. He sneaks extra pancakes onto my plate when he thinks Almeria isn’t looking.

One afternoon, when he comes home from school, he sees me waiting in the courtyard and runs straight into my arms.

“I missed you,” he says, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

I hold him tightly, peppering his face with kisses like I usually see Almeria do. He’s so lovable that I feel like a big brother of some sort.

“I don’t want him to get used to this,” Almeria says to me that night, her voice quiet but sharp.

We’re in the playroom, putting away Luca’s toys. I’m drying out the watercolor painting he made, one he made me promise to dry, so my back is to her.

“Get used to what?” I ask, pretending I don’t know what she’s talking about.

“To you being here all the time,” she continues. “He deserves consistency, safety and permanence. Neither of which you’ve ever been good at.”

I don’t argue. I just say, “I’m trying. And why do you think I’m not good at all those?”

She laughs bitterly. “Why do I think...? I know how the life you lead works, Gaspare. Trying can never change what you did. What you caused.”

“No,” I say. “But it changes what I do now.”

And for the first time, she doesn’t reply.

There’s a heat building between us that neither of us talks about.

Sometimes our hands brush when we pass each other in the hallway. Sometimes her gaze lingers too long when I laugh at something Luca says. Sometimes I see her watching me from the balcony when I train with the guards I’ve stationed at her mansion out back.

And sometimes, I catch her closing her eyes when I speak softly in the quiet of the evening when we’re just sitting in the living room before dinner, as if my voice might be a lullaby she refuses to admit she needs.

But she always pulls away before anything happens.

That’s what she’s scared of. She’s scared for herself, not Luca. But she’ll use him as a shield just this once.

---