Page 91 of Cursed Shadows 2

His answer is a frown. His gaze cuts to the contoured bruise on my cheekbone for a beat.

“That you love me,” I explain, and my voice is low, soft, as though if I speak loud enough then I’m only shaming myself. “If I’d said it back then, would you have said it to me?”

It’s not really in his nature or his culture.

The kiss was a declaration of love, each kiss is anI love younow and eternally, but in my culture we speak the words.

He sighs the answer with an edge of defeat, “I planned on it.”

Slowly, I slide my hands down his chest. A caress of sorts, a lure for him to tell me more.

He does.

“The night I set the trap for you, of baubles and sweets,” he says, and it’s not lost on me that he calls it a trap, not a trail, and I smile something small, “was the night I planned on confessions.”

Confessions.

It takes me a pause to realize what he meant to tell me back then. More than love, he was going to tell me about evate.

But I can’t let on that I know about our evate connection yet, it won’t serve me. He finds comfort in my ignorance, because I’m winning, he’s losing, and if he keeps this one thing secret from me, this one piece of knowledge that he can hold over me, then that soothes him.

“My time in your land was at an end, and Eamon warned me of your father.” His eyes darken. “I knew he would never allow a marriage between us. But I was determined to steal you. Not even your father was going to stand in my way.”

Beneath the furs, I shift my feet closer to him until they touch his shins, and I’m soothed by the contact.

“So I meant to propose,” he sighs the words with the same defeat that softens his eyes. “I meant to reveal my hand—and take you.”

The admission strikes me like a sword in the gut.

I blink at him, it’s all I can manage. On the third blink, an itch prickles at my eyes. I feel the tear slide down my temple and into my hair.

“You were going to propose?”

“Yes. But your father stole you from me,” and there’s the growl I recognize all too well in him as his eyes smoulder, “Icame to your window, I threw stones each night, but as you said—you ignored me. Then I came to you again at the court, and you slighted me. You shamed me,” and his lips curl to bare his teeth, “mockedme.”

The tears streak freely down my face to gather on my pillow. “My father—”

He cuts me off with a growl. “You chose what you chose. If you had come to me, told me at the court what you faced, I would have taken you then, and your life would have been different. We would be different. You would have the animals in the garden, the scripture in your own private library, the husband who loves you.” His lashes lower on me. “You chose what you chose—and you can do nothing but blame others for it.”

I swallow back a thickness in my throat. “That’s not fair. You never said anything to me about a future, about marriage or, at the very least, your protection. So you expected that I would risk my father’s punishments all in thehopethat you would save me?”

Those deep blue eyes run me over like I’m a dead rodent on the side of a path. “How awful his lectures must be on you. To not be the precious favourite, the darling pampered with dresses and sweets and whatever whim she desires in the moment. Did he take away your pretty baubles?”

The mockery strikes me cold.

And now, I see myself through his eyes.

A silly, spoilt halfling.

You want to be the only one… the darling.

Before my face can twist with the fresh wave of sobs, I roll onto my back. It doesn’t fully hide me from his eternal stare, but I find more comfort in it.

Still, I fight the ache in my chest, the twist of my heart. “And so that’s what you see when you look at me.”

Leaning closer, the heat of his mouth brushes along the shell of my ear. “What else is there?”

Weak.

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