How did I mess up so badly with literally the perfect man?
“Raina.”
I nod. This group of children are old enough to know when adults want them to scatter, and they do.
Leaving us awkwardly alone.
“Would you really have killed him?”
I don’t have to specify who.
“Without hesitation.”
“Do you wish I’d asked you to do it?”
“No.”
He says this, also without hesitation.
“I wonder what it must be like to go through life with so much certainty,” I said. Tovian tilted his head in bafflement. “You always know what to do in every situation. You never second-guess yourself.”
“Is that what you think?”
He shoved off the edge of the dais he was leaning against. The stage itself has been repurposed as storage. The grand red curtains made of gleaming crimson spidersilk are closed, concealing the makeshift racks that contain the children’s personal belongings.
Tovian rarely raises his voice. I’ve heard him do it on the battlefield. When he needs to be heard, he can project.
He chooses softness now. The kind of quiet speech where every consonant is a razor and every vowel a knife.
“Don’t you think I’ve second-guessed myself every day since I met you?” He stalks forward. Lethal. Not to me. I know he would never harm me physically. “Do you think I’ve never asked myself whether a woman is worth abandoning your entire tribe for?”
He circles me. I stand, ramrod straight. Our eyes meet like swords clashing.
“Do you honestly think I’ve never second-guessed choosing a stranger over my own parents? My brother? My cousins?”
My lungs constrict. I sip air.
“Only to find that the woman I love enough to follow her into battle, is hopelessly in love with a man who barely gives her the time of day?”
“I’m not!”
Panic drips into my bloodstream.
“I’m not in love with Lorcan. I never have been.” I wince. It’s not true. I fancied myself in love with him for a long time, but now that I know what love actually feels like, I know it wasn’t real.
Tovian shakes his head in disappointment.
“I’m not. I thought I was, but I’ve known for a long time now that it was nothing more than friendship. Since well before I met you.” I lick my lips, trying to figure out how to convince him. “It was a girlhood crush that went on too long. That is my fault. I own it. I fucked up two people’s lives because I couldn’t see what was right in front of my face.”
“What about your life?”
“I wasn’t counting my own.”
Tovian’s lips twitched at that.
“I screwed up my friendship with Lorcan. I know it’s hard to believe, but there was a time when he and I were real friends. We had fun. I admit I hoped it would evolve into more, but looking back…” I swallowed. “Looking back, it was easier to maintain a crush on him than it was to try having a romantic relationship with anyone else. I hated the idea that I might be rejected, or desired only for my title. Arranged marriages are common among Myseci royalty. If nothing else, I could be sure that Lorcan wouldn’t reject me outright, and I knew he didn’t want to be king.”
Not my king, anyway.
