I freeze. As if that would be appealing to me. “That’s the last thing I want.”
“Why do you resist all notions of love so fervently?”
The question gives me pause. I stare into a dark corner of the room. Every memory of Joyce rises to the forefront of my mind. Her torture. Her candy-coated words to my father.
My father’s weak excuses, time and again. His explanations. Katria… I was lost in an abyss that she saved me from. You will never understand the wound the death of your mother left… Oh, I understood. I understood Joyce sold him lies and he bought them up faster than the silver from her mines.
Just like I understood how it became easier for Father with time to be on her side. The older I got, the more I looked like Mother. The harder it was for him to be around me. All the while, my home became a crumbling remnant of bygone days. Lost forever for what?
Ah, love.
“Because love is pain,” I whisper.
“Love is life.”
I glare at him and snap, “What would you know—a runaway prince locked in a tower who buys the only wife he’s ever had?”
Davien’s eyes widen a fraction, but instead of anger, his brow furrows into something that looks like focus. Sympathy radiates off of him. “What makes you say love is pain?”
I don’t answer, focused only on my escape route. With a flap of wings summoned in a blink and a shimmer of magic, he’s in front of me, hand holding the door shut just as I go to open it. I glare up at him.
“Let me out.”
“Why do you think love, of all things, is pain?”
“I have seen what happens when two people fall in love. One collapses into the other, all sense of self, and worth, and strength crumbling under the boot of the party who ends up on top.” Like the statue of my father that I had built in my mind, strong and resolute, turning to dust the moment Joyce entered our lives. “I have heard the bitter fights, the barbs, the hate that is slung and smoothed over in the name of love, precious love.”
“None of that is love,” he whispers.
I roll my eyes. “Love isn’t like the storybooks. It’s a transaction at best.”
“No.” Davien takes a step forward, encroaching on my personal space. “Love is the closest thing we have to meaning in this world. The love of a mother for her children, the love between friends, the love of a husband and wife, love for who we are and all those who strove before us to hand us the world we have now—love is why we live, why we fight, why we carry on when things get tough…it is not always easy. But it is our reprieve from true hardship, not the hardship itself.”
“You lie,” I seethe.
“Katria…” He trails off, eyes searching me. “What happened to you before you came to my home?”
“Let me pass.”
“I’m trying to—”
“Let me pass!” My voice raises a fraction and he steps aside quickly.
I yank the door before he can say anything else, storming out and barely resisting the urge to slam it in his face.
* * *
I layin bed well past the sun the next morning. Footsteps echo down the hall as the world wakes around me. I wonder who else stays here—Shaye and Giles seem to. Oren, likely. Hol has his own home. Vena and her advisers, maybe?
My breath catches as a familiar gait traverses the hall. His steps seem to slow at my door, all but coming to a stop. How do I know him by his walk? Can I really smell him from here? Or is my mind dredging up memories of last night? Or, far more likely, does my skin still smell like his?
Davien keeps walking.
I keep replaying the night in my mind, but it doesn’t make any more sense the more hours that pass. I toss and turn. Not sleeping. But not feeling like I’m awake either. I’m trapped in those moments we shared. Moments that should have never transpired, but somehow did.
Why did I kiss him? Why did I let him kiss me? How did I end up in his bed?
I groan and roll over, tangling myself in the sheets. I ache from head to toe. I thought kissing him would relieve this tension but it has only made it worse.
