He speaks of it with such calm, matter-of-fact cool. Like he’s talking about someone else. But I feel the impact of what he’s saying like a gunshot.
I can’t say anything, because what he’s telling me is horrible. He would’ve been a boy thirty years ago. I knew that he hadn’t been injured in a simple accident, and the scars are grotesque. But I didn’t realize it was torture. I assumed it was some kind of explosion, battle injury. I didn’t realize it was something so targeted. Something so…
“You are shocked. Because you think that I am the only thing in this country to be afraid of, but you are wrong. The press reports what the palace decided the world needed to know, and there were some things about me we’ve always decided were best…kept under wraps. That I was ever held captive was one of them.”
“Why?” I ask, the word hushed.
“Who wants to know their leader is vulnerable?”
“So you let them think you’re a monster?” I ask, and regret it. He looks at me with such ferocity I feel…
It isn’t fear. My stomach is tight, my breathing shallow.
“It is true,” he says. “We let it go a bit far. It is changing now.” He gestures around the room. “I can keep you safe. But you have to let me.”
“You want to keep me safe?”
“I have no desire to have to marry again. Two wives lost is one thing, three begins to look careless.”
“It begins to look like murder is what it begins to look like,” I say.
He laughs. “I didn’t murder anyone. I know that severely impacts on my mystique. I won’t tell you that I’m not a killer, because in the context of battle and self-defense, back in those days, I did what I had to do and more. But I have never harmed a woman.”
I want to tell him that harm can be caused in more ways than just the physical. But I don’t.
“I’ve survived this long, you should listen to me.”
“I didn’t know you until three days ago.”
He inclines his head, a slight smile on his lips. And then we are interrupted again by dinner. I wish that I could hide my excitement for the food. But I can’t.
“I do enjoy watching you eat,” he says.
I wrinkle my nose when I look at him. “And why is that?”
“You take such obvious delight in it. It is exquisite. I told you, I wish to learn your favorites.”
“I like this,” I say, looking at the creamy pasta in front of me.
“And you enjoyed the cake.”
“Yes,” I say.
There is no point in being churlish about the food, because I do enjoy it, and I don’t want him to serve me anything that I don’t like. I have pride, but I also have to be somewhat realistic. And I don’t want to be self-defeating.
“Tonight the cake is strawberry.”
I do try to not look too pleased about that. Because there is a line between pleasure and humiliation. I don’t wish to cross it.
But then, I never do. I try to keep my dreams manageable. Cerebral. Not emotional.
I’m pleased, though, by the mention of strawberry cake, and I try to hide my pleasure on principle.
He is looking at me in that way that he does. That way that makes me feel like my skin is covered with prickles. That way that makes me feel as if he can see straight inside of me.
I don’t know how he’s taken me from talking about my own captivity, trauma and war, to strawberry cake. It’s one of the ways in which I find him to be so dangerous, really. I can’t anticipate him. My sister always accuses me of using my science brain when I’m being practical or analytical. I find that my science brain doesn’t help me with Lucian. He doesn’t behave in the way that I expect him to. He doesn’t behave in quite the way I would expect anyone to.
He is frightening. But I don’t get the sense that he’s cruel. He’s something. And he is certainly utterly implacable in the face of what I want. He doesn’t mind looking me in the eye and telling me that he’s putting me in a cage.
