Page 109 of The General's Gift
“You were right about Shakespeare. It is useless, and it only brings chaos. Can I have my practical book back, please?”
“I don’t want you to do a practical thing in your life ever again,” he said.
She forced her chin higher. If she could hold her neck steady, perhaps he wouldn’t see the rest breaking. “You don’t get to order me about anymore. You signed that right away to your solicitor, remember?”
She glanced up—and wished she hadn’t. He looked like a man who had crushed a butterfly in his fist by accident and now dared not open his hand. The sight sent a flare of heat through her chest. He thought her that fragile? Perhaps she was—inside, wings torn, breath shallow. But she was done showing him her brittleness.
“I was doing my duty,” he said. His voice was rough, stripped bare. “I could not go to war and leave you unprotected.”
She swept her hand toward the walls towering around them. “Do I look unprotected to you?”
“Perhaps… perhaps you needed no protection at all.”
Celeste held herself stiff. Yes, she needed nothing. She had a fortress of stone, and she would turn it into armor, walling out everyone—including him.
“Now that you’ve looked in on me and satisfied your duty, you are free to go.” Her tone was even, but the evenness cost her. “I imagine you are tired. You should rest.”
She rose too quickly, her knees trembling, and crossed to the window. The pane bit cold against her fingertips, a welcome sting against the fire beneath her skin.
Behind her came the slow tread of his boots. Yes, he needed to leave. Before she crumbled.
The silence thickened. His presence pressed against her back, heat and weight without a single touch.
“You wanted me to marry another man,” she whispered. The words scraped out of her like glass shards, cutting her lips, her throat, her heart.
The hurt was unbearable. Yet her body betrayed her, leaning toward him as if it had forgotten the wound. He had broken her, and still some desperate part of her wished him to kiss the pain away. One breath, one tilt, and she could press into him, let his steadiness swallow the ache, pretend she hadn’t already splintered once in his hands.
But she knew better now.
“And it was the hardest thing I ever did,” he said, his voice roughened, dragged up from the pit where he kept every wound. “Watching you dance with him… It cut me deeper than any French saber. Broke me where no marshal ever could.”
Her eyes fluttered shut, lashes wet against her cheeks. The words struck low, stealing breath from her chest, leaving only the ache. It throbbed like surrender, tempting her to yield, to believe.
“What do you want here, Alexander?”
“I want you.”
Her grip tightened on the sill. “For how long? Don’t tell me. I know. Until you’re called back to war. Until duty forces you to go away again. You said it yourself. That we lived in different worlds. That I didn’t belong in yours.”
The bitterness scorched her tongue, sharp and small and unworthy of the love she still carried for him. But pain was all she had left to armor herself.
“I resigned from active service. My only duty now is to you. And making you happy.”
Her heart thrashed in her chest like a bird panicked in a cage. She couldn’t breathe.
“Please,” she whispered. “I fought in the battle for your heart, and I lost.” A sob rose in her throat, but she swallowed it quickly. “You’re the general who never surrenders. And I… I’m the girl who always does. But I’m not strong enough to do it again.”
She looked away, her whole body trembling. “It hurts too much.”
Her words still hung in the air when she heard the scrape of steel.
Slowly, she turned.
Hawk had drawn his sword. The gleaming blade that had carved victory out of chaos, that had carried him through a dozen campaigns.
And then, God help her, he bent. The general who had never surrendered was lowering himself, one knee sinking to the rug, the other braced.
He set the weapon flat at her feet, the hilt angled toward her like an offering. His hands lingered there, splayed wide, as though releasing not just the sword but every piece of armor he had ever worn.
