Shocked silence echoed through the empty stone chamber.
“Highness, I—”
“Get out.”
When she was gone, Lorcan turned to me with consternation. “Was that necessary? Help is hard enough to find right now—”
“You didn’t do anything,” I cut him off icily, furious with him for inviting this into my life, and feeling no responsibility for managing its impact on me.
“Exactly. Nor was I going to.” I saw, then, that Lorcan was angry, too. He’s trying to control it, but it’s simmering there in his eyes. “What does it take to convince you, Zosia?”
“A little effort on your part would go a long way, Lorcan.” I picked up my brush and drew it through my hair. Soothing. I remember my mother doing this when I was small. Cata when I was a bit older. Maids like Norah, too. How do I make him see? I don’t want to argue but we need to have this out. The wedding is still two months away.
If it happens at all.
“Effort? Seriously, Zosia?” He inserted himself between me and my mirror, blocking my view, leaning his butt on the edge of my vanity, arms crossed and glowering. “Every day, all day, I am devoted to you. Only to you. But it’s never enough to convince you to trust me. I don’t know what more I can do—”
“You could have sent her away the first time she tried to flirt with you.”You could at least acknowledge that it’s happening, that I’m not making it up.
“I ignored her. She would have given up when she saw I wasn’t interested.”
I set the brush down on the vanity next to his ass, not gently. We both jumped at the hard click of metal on polished wood. “And if she didn’t?”
“It. Still. Wouldn’t. Matter.” His eyes were ice floes on an arctic sea. “It doesn’t matter what she does. It matters whatIdo. I can’t be responsible for other people’s actions. Reassign her, but don’t fire her over nothing.”
“When she ‘accidentally’ comes in while you’re dressing and insists on helping you? Would you say something then? Do something to deter her?” Mine are hard like emeralds. In the part of my reflection I can see in the mirror, they are as unyielding as sprouts of hope, daring him to let them grow for once. “Anything? Tell her to leave? Or would you sit idly by while she fondles your—”
“Enough. You’ve made your point.”
He pushed off the vanity hard enough to rattle the mirror and everything on it. The brush toppled to the floor. “Clearly, it’s too much to ask you to trust me. I fought for you. I risked my life for you. I nearly died for you. I made one mistake—a serious mistake, I grant you—”
“It wasn’t one mistake, Lorcan. It was enough to set the expectation that any woman who wants to can have a night with the Auralian Hero—”
“I fucked up! I can’t unfuck it!”
I’ve never heard him yell before. I didn’t know hecouldroar like that. His curses rang from the stone walls.
“I can’t undo what I did, Zosia. If you can’t forgive me for it, then we cannot…”
He doesn’t want to say it. Even now, when he knows it would be a disaster for us, he has a taste for kingship and he wants it badly. Badly enough to destroy us. Me. He would be just as bad as the husband he saved me from marrying a few months ago.
Worse.
“You’re right, Lorcan. We cannot.” I rose and gathered my robe around my body. Regal despite my short hair and stick-thin body, despite the fact that every cell of my being quakes with rage and despair. Outwardly, I am calm. I hate the reflection of myself I see in the mirror. A perfect queen. I despise this version of myself.
Queen or not, I deserve better than to be humiliated by my own maid. Zosia, me, I deserve Lorcan’s whole love and if I am only to have a fraction of it, then I’m better off not having it at all.
I can put myself first, even if no one else will.
But I wasn’t the only one with pent-up grievances to air.
“There is nothing I can do to defend you from your own bitterness, Princess. Send away all your servants if you want to. This is not about me and what I would or would not do.”
He opens a pack and starts throwing clothes into it. My heart fractured into shards of glass. The pieces shred my insides.
“You never even tried to defend us.”
I said it softly, but it rang from the stone as loudly as Lorcan’s shout.
