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She made a noncommittal noise and walked to the window, waiting until she saw Alys's tall, lithe form striding toward the barn before she answered. “It isn’t necessary. I can understand how embarrassing it might be for you if the apprentice in your home started throwing herself at the prince.”
“That isn’t why I said it. I care very little for people’s opinions.”
Clare folded her arms across her chest, unable to parse out if he hadn’t taken the easy explanation she’d given him because he truly wanted to be honest with her, or if it was all just another manipulation. “Then did you find out what you wanted to? Have you figured me out?”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to be at odds with you.”
“We got on well enough before, didn’t we?” In truth, on the road to Veralna, she had felt much more at ease with Marquin than Verol. She understood Marquin better.
“Yes. But that was before.”
Before she was here, in their home.
“I don’t…trust easily,” he said. “I think you and I are alike in that way.”
“And you trust less when you must trust other people with Verol.”
“You matter to him. You have the potential to hurt him more than anyone save myself.”
She knew, by the way he said it, exactly what he was thinking. “I’m not trying to be his daughter. I don’t need a father, I’m not a child.”
“No. You aren’t. But to him, you might as well already be his family.”
“It’s not my fault how he sees me. I didn’t ask for him to want to help me.”
“I know. And while he can’t control the Kinthing’s insistence that he do what he can to protect you, he would never try to force you to feel any way about him. Nor would I ask you to.”
“Then what are you asking?”
“For you to try and be patient with me. There was a time I almost—” He broke off, rubbing a hand over his face. “Twenty-one winters ago, Verol had another apprentice. A little girl named Marie. She was killed. It broke him and I lost him and it’s taken me two decades to bring him back. Two decades where the Kinthing was buried in so much misery he didn’t hear its call. Until you.”
“So that’s why you hate me,” she said softly.
“I don’t hate you.”
“But you wish I wasn’t here.”
“Yes,” he said. “And no. You’ve brought him back to life, in many ways. I just need time. To adjust to you.”
“Take all the time you need.” Clare retrieved her guitar case, holding onto it like a shield as she stepped past him into the hall. “It won’t take him long to discover I am nothing anyone would want to call family.”
She hit the end of the hall and nearly ran into Verol. He stopped with a mildly stunned expression on his face. “You look very nice.”
“Thank you.” Clare dredged up a smile because smiles were her currency. “Your husband had to be prompted to say the same.”
Verol’s lips tilted up in an answering smile. “He was never good with compliments. Made figuring out he liked me very difficult.”
Behind her, Marquin snorted. “You didn’t need compliments. Your ego was the size of Drake Mountain when I met you.”
She couldn’t help herself from wanting to know. “So how did you figure it out?” Relationships—all of them—were strange to her, but romantic ones the most. Because the only love she’d ever known was the kind that lived in between the lines of song lyrics, and then she’d met them, and she’d seen it between them. But she didn’t understand how it existed. How it came to be.
And she wasn’t prepared for Verol’s answer.
“I broke a wine bottle over his ex-boyfriend’s head.”
Clare blinked. “And how did that tell you he liked you?”
“It didn’t. It told him that I liked him.”
