Anna blinked, her breath catching. For a heartbeat, she didn’t trust herself to speak.
“You said so yourself,” she finally managed, her voice strained and breaking in places. “You don’t intend to marry. Well, I must. I have to.”
The confession came out in a rush, edged with bitterness she hadn’t meant to reveal. Her throat tightened. She hated that it trembled, hated how bare she felt standing there.
“This thing,” she whispered, eyes shimmering though she refused to let a single tear fall, “whatever it is between us, it cannot go anywhere. I cannot afford for people to think otherwise.”
Her voice cracked, and she hated the vulnerability in it, the ache of wanting what she could not have. She hated, too, that she meant every word.
Henry stood completely still, but his expression warred between frustration and something far more dangerous: longing. His jaw was clenched, his hands curled at his sides like he was holding back from reaching for her.
“I know,” he said, after a long silence. “I know, Anna.”
But his eyes didn’t move from her face. And the space between them felt impossibly charged.
“And yet,” he stepped forward slowly, the firelight dancing in his eyes. “And yet, here you are.”
“I’m here,” she echoed. “To make things clear.”
“Are they?”
No. They weren’t.
Her eyes searched his. “We’ve… danced near something. I don’t know what it is, and maybe you don’t either. But I need you to know that I see it. And I’m walking away from it. Before it becomes something I cannot leave behind.”
He looked at her for a long, still moment. The kind of look that stripped her down to bone and breath, that made the air between them feel tight and heavy.
Then, quieter now, almost disbelieving, “You came here. Alone. At night. To tell me you're walking away?”
She hesitated, her resolve warring with the way his voice slid under her skin.
“Yes,” she whispered, though it barely felt like a word at all.
He stepped forward, just enough to be close, not enough to touch. That small mercy was the only thing keeping her steady.
“You’re brave,” he said, his voice like velvet over iron. “But not very convincing.”
The truth of it struck her clean in the chest, and her breath hitched.
“I don’t need convincing,” she shot back, trying to hold the line, trying not to unravel.
“Oh no?” he murmured, his gaze dark and intent. “Then why are you still here?”
Her throat tightened. She hated how he did that, how he saw straight through the walls she so carefully built. “You make me…” she began, then stopped, swallowing the storm inside her. “You make me forget myself.”
He tilted his head slightly, eyes flicking to her mouth before returning to her eyes. “Then perhaps,” he said softly, “you’ve found your true self.”
That should have terrified her. Instead, it only made her pulse race faster.
She folded her arms across her chest, not from cold, but to stop her hands from doing something foolish, like reaching for him.
“You like to play games, don’t you?” she said, her voice low, trembling with the effort it took to keep her guard up.
His expression shifted, something between amusement and something deeper, quieter, almost reverent. His mouth then curled into that slow, knowing smile that always made her stomach tighten. “Only with worthy opponents.”
“I’m not your opponent.”
“No?” He stepped closer, his voice low. “You argue like one. Look at me like one.”
