Page 65 of House of Pawns
“Thank you,” I say. My eyes drop from his momentarily, embarrassed by our closeness. As if sensing this, he readjusts his position so our bodies are no longer fused together.
Neither of us says anything for a long moment. Raheem studies me and I look at the ceiling. Finally, I sit up, pushing my wild hair out of my face.
There’s something shifting in the air here. It’s dangerous and beautiful and something about it feels so wrong and so right. And I’m terrified of every implication of everything in this room.
“I want you to know that you’ve prepared as well as you can for the King’s arrival,” Raheem says quietly. I can’t see him, sitting to his side, with him still lying on the bed. But there’s so much tenderness in his voice, I don’t know what to do with that. “Never before has a House been lead by a human. Houses around the world have been driven into chaos and exposure by leaders who have been resurrected for centuries. You’ve been in this life for mere weeks, and you’re doing amazing things.”
My eyes are locked on the painting, the one I know hides a hidden passage. But I’m not really seeing anything. Every fiber of my being is aware of the small distance between us, of every breath he takes.
“As much as I hope you are not the Queen, you possess the qualities she had. You truly are born to do this, Alivia.”
His very honest words pull a little string in my chest. “And why do you hope I am not her?” I breathe.
He does not answer my question immediately. Instead, I feel heat hovering over my shoulder, as if his hand is poisedthere, just about to touch me. But it doesn’t dare. “If I answer that question, it will cost me my life.”
And suddenly, I feel the bed move just slightly, and when I look over my shoulder back at Raheem, he is gone.
I feel slightly breathless. That was as honest of a confession as I think Raheem is capable of. This man has only known me for a little while, and he’s just told me he doesn’t want me to be another man’s queen.
Raheem wants me.
It can’t be love. It just can’t.
But I’ve seen the look in his eyes more than once. What he did for me last night, it means more than simple words and weighs heavier than lustful glances.
Raheem accepts me for who I am. He admires my ability to lead, to make others do the things that need to be done. He loves what I am able to do in my current state, but knows what I will soon become.
It’s a human need. The need to be accepted for who we are.
And it makes my heart break, because I never had that with the man I gave my heart to.
There was always resentment there. There was always regret for the things neither of us could control. There was always an end to us because of my DNA.
I take two deep breaths as I fight back the angry, forsaken desperation that rises up in me, and breathe out the longing for something that was never to be.
Ian was my brief past. A short-lived comet of light. But it has become apparent, over and over again, that he was never to be my future.
Let him go, Alivia.
So I climb out of bed. I make myself ready for the day. I will prepare for the arrival of a King.
And if I am a Queen, I will be a Queen.
Chapter
Twenty-Four
THE SNOW IS OVER A foot and a half deep now. As darkness blankets the town of Silent Bend, the ominous clouds overhead continue to circle. The thunder ripples through the sky. The flakes continue to fall.
The gauge on the front porch reads two degrees.
The last text I received from Luke said roughly ninety percent of the population had evacuated.
I breathe just a little easier.
Samuel drives the tractor I didn’t know we had, clearing the snow from the driveway. He’s also worked at clearing the snow from the roads leading to our House from the main highway.
He comes back with reports that the snow trickles off immediately outside the borders of Silent Bend.
