Page 202 of The Crown's Awakening
"I have never once looked at any of this and thought it was enough on its own," he said, his thumb moving along my jaw. "It has always been you. It has only ever been you."
Something in my chest pulled tight. I wanted to lean into him, let his certainty be enough, let the warmth of him close over everything that hurt. I missed him. That was the worst part of it. He was right here, close enough to feel, and still there was distance between us, something that had grown without either of us stopping it.
I loved him. Completely and inconveniently, in a way that made all of this harder. If I had loved him less, I could have walked away without this ache, without caring how easily his certainty cut.
But I did love him. And he loved me. I had never doubted that. I just did not know how we had gotten here.
I stepped back. The distance returned between us. His hand lingered where I had been for a fraction too long before falling.
Something crossed his face, quieter than anger, deeper than confusion. The look of a man who had given everything he knew how to give and still watched it fall short.
The silence stretched.
He exhaled slowly and something in him reset. "Then I will fix it,” he said.
I blinked. "What?"
“I will come to dinner more. You will know how much you matter to me.”
I looked at him. He believed that completely, and I believed that he believed it. That was almost the hardest part. In his mind the board had been cleared. Jessamy was ash. He would come to dinner. The problem handled. He was looking at me the way he looked at everything he had just fixed, waiting for the relief to show on my face.
He did not understand that none of those things were the problem. He was. The way he left me waiting, the way he stood there while she undressed and called it alliance, the way he burned everything after and thought it proved something. He loved me, I knew that. He just did not understand that it was notenough to destroy for me, he had to be there. He reached for me again, his hand coming to my wrist, softer now, like he expected me to stay. “There," he said quietly. "It is done."
I held his eyes and felt the pull of him, the wanting of him, the grief of standing this close to someone and feeling this far away.
"It is not," I said.
The certainty in his expression slipped for an instant.
I turned before he could answer.
CHAPTER 59
Queen Heir
Ido not remember leaving. Only the feeling of it, the room and the blood and the sound of it still ringing somewhere behind me as I move through the corridor and back through the threshold without slowing.
The hidden palace takes me in without resistance. The air shifts. The noise dulls. The world quiets in a way that feels almost cruel after what I have just walked through.
My eyes burn. I do not stop walking. I do not lift my head.
"Asharin." It is Enovar's voice.
I do not answer.
Something settles over my shoulders, heavy and warm. A cloak. The hood pulled forward before I can protest, shielding my face completely.
"Come with me."
Enovar's hand closes firmly around my arm. He does not wait for permission. He moves and I follow, and we do not stop until the corridors thin and the walls begin to fall away. Thepath narrows, then opens, and he leads me straight through the boundary.
The shift comes and goes in an instant.
And then water. A lake stretches out before us, still and wide, fed by a waterfall that cuts cleanly through the rock above it. The sound of it fills everything.
I stop without meaning to. The air here is different, open and uncontained, and the tension in my chest loosens just slightly.
Enovar releases my arm but does not step away.
