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I sank onto the end of the bed. My fingers clutched the fabric. “In Gorlassar an emrys is intimate with only the one they’ve bonded to. Who’ve you been with? Who are you bonded to?”
“I’ve bonded to no one.”
“But you must have!”
“I’ve shared a mutual seduction with one woman.”
“Seduction?” I whispered. I crushed my hand to my heart, feeling the organ splintering one small shard at a time. Unbonded relationships were forbidden. A sin. Evil. The mortal world was just unveiled as the abyss it truly was. Men murdered. They died. They took intimacy when they desired, without eternal bonds. My admiration for Caedryn plummeted off a cliff into that sucking abyss.
He must have sensed my emotions because he staggered, grabbing the bedpost. “Don’t wound me in such a way. Let me explain.”
I nodded, fighting the instinct to recoil. He was too close.
“I did love her. She was the only one, but our relationship wasn’t a love as you’ve witnessed between others in Gorlassar. I imagine when you discern their feelings they’re pure, sweet, beautiful. Our love, the love I had for this woman, was raw. Not tender. Untamed. Desperate. Sadistic.”
My face pinched painfully.
“Imagine a craving so intense, so insatiable, you’d do anything to satisfy it,” he said.
Caedryn’s words came back to me. Not in me to be satisfied. “No,” I whispered. “No.”
“That’s the truth.”
“You’re trying to be careful with me.”
Silence, while he gathered his words.
I didn’t wait. “Are you saying you’d force yourself upon me if given the chance? If you couldn’t control yourself? This is why you won’t touch me.”
“No. No! I’d never hurt you!” Caedryn pressed his fist to his mouth.
“But you’ve thought about making love to me.”
He dropped his fist and looked squarely at me. “Every day.”
I fought to keep my breath steady. I could do nothing about my racing heart. “Your love was so perverse you cower at touch?” His twisted, human love. His dark mortal side. I felt sick.
“Not exactly. After welcoming you in my arms when you arrived, the way you clung so despairingly, so injured, and yet so fragile and innocent, I knew I couldn’t offer you more than the touch of my hand. Your embrace was too consuming. You burned my soul and nearly broke me. I’ve tried to be so careful since then.”
I smoothed my hand down my neck. And I had crawled into bed with him, not knowing how he had to work to restrain himself.
Caedryn leaned around the bedpost, hovering above me. “What I feel for you is not what I felt for her.”
“Who was it?”
Caedryn only stared at me, reading my face, willing me to realize so he wouldn’t have to say her name.
“It was her—the empress—Rhianu.” I’d betrayed the empress’s heart.
“Yes,” he said softly.
I hadn’t considered how a twisted past with another woman might affect Caedryn. My soul was fraught with worry. What did his revelation mean for me? What did it mean for us?
“Niawen, did you hear what I said?”
“Of course.”
“Not about the empress. About us. I said ‘I feel for you.’”
