Page 8 of Claimed By the Fae Lord

What was I doing keeping these reminders so close? Surrounding myself with so many of them?

My eyes locked on the most intricately detailed one, pinned to the wall beside my bed. I felt my stomach tighten, remembering the night I'd drawn that sketch only weeks back.

It was after our first confrontation during the bride trials, long after our engagement had ended. Only, instead of drawing the scowl I’d put on her face, I’d recreated her sleeping form from memory.

She’d enthralled me, ivory skin glowing in moonlight, lips curved in a faint smile. I drew every detail I remembered from those hours after our first time together.

I tore it down, the sketch fluttering through the air as gravity pulled it down. Yearning and bitterness churned inside me.

The action bolstered me to keep going. Snatching images from my night table, from the walls, I destroyed them all.

Beneath the layers of anger lay a festering wound, a gash of hurt so deep it cut through the valley of my soul. It would never fully heal.

She’d shown me nothing. No regret. No pain. Nothing.

How could she act as though nothing had happened? How could she not have been just as affected as I had been?

The simmering anger boiled over. I swept my hand across the desk, sending papers flying. Writing and drawing utensils landed quietly on the patterned rug.

I stomped on them, snapping and crushing them into pieces. Colors smeared into the green and blue fibers under my feet. Black ink slowly bled outward, undoubtedly ruining the floor covering.

The sudden urge to create among the destruction came out of nowhere. I was losing my fucking mind.

Panting, I looked for something else to attack only to see my empty sketchbook on the side table near my reading chair. Compulsion had me picking it up, charcoal in hand, and beginning anew.

It was uncontrollable. Putting images to paper got them out of my mind. For a short time, at least.

I was trapped in a cycle of madness, the instrument in my hand my only outlet.

"Liam, stop," Aeryn commanded, her voice cutting through my haze.

I looked up to see the queen-to-be standing under the doorframe, her green eyes probing.

Why couldn't she leave me in peace? "I'm busy."

"Are you?" she challenged, stepping inside. "Busy torturing yourself?"

Her gaze swept over what was left of the sketches of Raina, of the fragments of my tantrum.

"Leave it alone," I muttered, setting the drawing aside and scrubbing my face.

"Talk to me, Liam. It’s eating you alive, this obsession." She crossed her arms, her feline grace evident even in her stillness.

"Obsession?" I laughed without humor, avoiding her eyes. "You haven't known me long enough to call it that."

"Isn't it the truth, though? The drawings? The moodiness? You act as if Raina’s betrayed you, as if the betrothal ended yesterday and at her request."

"You don’t know anything," I shot back, standing abruptly.

Aeryn reached out tentatively, her touch light on my arm. I jerked away, breathing heavily. The room spun slightly, and I braced myself against the table.

Head down, I took a deep breath. "I think I'm losing my fucking mind."

She stepped closer. "You need to face this, not bury it."

"Face what, Aeryn?" My voice broke on the words. "That I was doing fine and then thirty seconds in her presence again fucking wrecked me?"

"Yes, exactly that," she insisted. "Maybe there's hope for you two after all.”

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