Page 105 of A Dose of Agony
“We’re partners, right?” I whisper.
“Yes,” he says. “But you have not been treating me like one.”
“Neither have you.”
His heart aches, the feeling flooding my extremities. He hated being apart from me. Hated keeping truths, the same way I did. “I didn’t have much choice.”
“You didn’t have to withhold the truth about the reality of the conflict.”
“If I told you the truth, that I’ve declared the accusations as false but only to a select group of loyal allies, and even they haven’t fully believed me…” He swallows, pressure carving into his chest. “Even they began whispering that they will need proof to believe in me. If I were to tell you that, the risk was my very soul because if you had heard that I’d sworn Liz was not my mate, you would have easily inferred that you are. If you were to face me after that realization and still deny me, even just out of a simple desire for more time, it would have destroyed me.”
I blink. “I wouldn’t have.”
But I understand the kind of risk he’s talking about. I can feel the pressure he felt as if it were my own now. Like his very chest is stretching, stretching, stretching to the point that it’s ready to split open, and knowing it will if he makes the wrong move.
“It shouldn’t have been like this. If Beatrice and Vincent had respected our culture and minded their own business, you and I could have had years to work this out. I hated feeling like I was pressuring you. I hated being apart from you. I was stuck, with no right answer.
“I had to be so careful, even if I told you the consequences of that rejection or the positive results that could come from you accepting me, it could be a form of coercion. I was afraid. So afraid that if I didn’t play this exactly right, my demon would rebel and I’d lose control. I was so close to losing it all. So close to Mr. Vandozer winning, not because he took my chosen as his but because he drove a wedge between my soul and yours. I couldn’t pressure you, and I couldn’t do anything to reveal this truth.”
He closes his eyes.
“I was going to step down,” he whispers. “Tomorrow. If—if you didn’t accept me I was going to let Trevor take my place as heir to the throne.”
My stomach twists. “Really?” I breathe.
He nods. “You’re more important than my position as a ruler. I was risking losing you, and that is simply not worth it.”
“But—you’d be giving up. Letting him win.”
“It would be highly unfair, yes. It would have weakened our trust and perhaps had lasting effects on our reputation with the Orizian people. But it would have given us the time we needed. It would have given us more protection. I could have focused on you, on us. I couldn’t balance both, giving you what you needed to accept me and managing an unstable world on the verge of war. I had to choose.”
My heart aches for him, for this impossible position he’s been in. Guilt, for how I’d only made it worse, stings deeply.
“It is not your fault,” he tells me. “You deserved time. I feel shame that I could not give that to you. You chose me, only once your back was against the wall. You knew the consequences of withholding your heart from me then, so you gave it. That’s—not how this should have gone.”
“You’re wrong,” I say softly. I run through the memory of my birthday dinner together. I’d chosen him that night; I only stalled because of Bea.
He swallows against the swell of emotion rising up in him.
“I love you,” I tell him. “I choose you, of my own free will. I choose you because I want you to be mine. So desperately, I wanted you to bemine.”The final word comes out fierce.
“I’m sorry that I kept you in the dark, kept these secrets from you, but I was so afraid—”
I curl in close to him. “I know.”
He breathes deeply a few times, allowing that pain and fear to filter away. I am here with him now. He can feel my love and acceptance, even though I haven’t technically completed the—
“Oh!” I say. This bond is so odd. I canfeelhis thoughts, without specific words. The process is incomplete. I hadn’t even realized. “I’m supposed to take a second mark, aren’t I?”
He takes in a long breath. “That is more of a technicality now,” he explains. “We are connected. I feel what you feel, and it’s clear you’ve fully accepted me. We cannot make any formal moves with the rebellion until the second mark is official, but it has no effect on me personally. It is customary for there to be a period of time between the first two because it’s very intense. You are meant to have enough time to fully understand the depth of the decision.”
“I understand it.”
He swallows, pressing his nose to my temple and nodding. “I know. I’m just saying you have time.”
The formal moves he’s referring to involve him presenting me to his courts and standing trial. I avoid the feelings those thoughts send through me.
“Like hours?” I joke.
