Page 110 of The Stolen Throne
After a pause, he rests his chin on the top of my head.
Maybe because…
A new possibility pierces the darkness I’ve been living in since he told me we couldn’t be together.
“Does this mean you don’t have to stay away from me now?” The question comes out small. “If I can help you, I mean.”
He takes a breath, and his hands slide up into my hair, tipping my head back, and we stare at each other.
“We don’t know anything yet,” he says. “Not for sure. Definitely not enough to ignore my…problems.”
I can see he hates this, too. For once he’s letting me see, though I’m guessing he’s still hiding exactly how much.
I swallow. “I’ve made this all harder for you.”
He bends over me like he wants to shake me. “You’re worth it.”
I sigh. “Is it awful that part of me wishes I could just let someone else figure this out? The zariph or the other sovereigns. I was supposed to be the throwaway. Not the one fixing the world.”
He sits quietly with that a moment. Not judging, though. “After I was shed and ran…” Reven’s clearly choosing his words carefully. “When I realized I couldn’t kill what was inside me or take my own life and end them—”
“I hate that you even thought about it.”
He must have felt so alone. Something I am familiar with. I want to kiss him and burrow into him more and hug him all at once. His stubborn chin is right there. If I went up on tiptoe, I could press my lips…
“Meren.”
His fingers squeeze, tugging my hair. My name is both a warning and a sigh on his lips. He clears his throat. “After that, I thought there was only one thing I could do.”
“What?”
“Hide. Take myself far away from the world. Remove the threat until nature could take its course and I’d die of old age. But then I heard you…”
I lift my gaze to encounter blue eyes so bright, so intense that the air seems to be sucked out of the space between us.
He smooths the hair back from my face. “Knowing you were out there, that you needed help—that gave me a reason to keep going. Your voice was the first. Then I heard Vos…and others called to me…and I found a purpose. Now it’s your turn.”
His hand stills on my cheek.
I frown. “Are you saying I’ve found my purpose?”
He searches my face, grave, and yet something else glints at me from his eyes. Something like pride or encouragement or even faith.
His fingers trail from my cheek to my jaw. “I’m saying I think you always had a purpose, Meren, and you just couldn’t see it until now.”
Is that true? I consider my life and Omma’s life, which was the trajectory mine was headed toward, and shake my head. “I don’t think so. My destiny was to either die pretending to be Tabra or raise another hidden princess like me and fade into obscurity when Tabra died.”
“Or become queen if she was the one killed.”
True, but I never considered that likely.
My biggest fear comes out of me in a whisper. “I don’t know if I can do this. Any of it. Especially not without…” Without you, I was going to say. Or am I being selfish again?
“I know,” he says in a voice gone darkly soft, his gaze both tender and…scorching.
Holy fires of hotness.
My breath stutters. “Don’t look at me that way unless you can mean it.”
