Mine.
MINE.
Menon exhaled slowly beneath me like he’d been holding tension inside his body for centuries.
Maybe he had.
“You truly frightened me tonight,” he admitted quietly after a moment.
I blinked up at him.
“What? Why?”
His jaw tightened.
“When your mother spoke to you as though you were fragile.” His luminous eyes darkened slightly. “I worried part of you still believed her.”
Oh.
Oh.
That hurt in the gentlest possible way.
Because he understood me too well already.
“I think…” I swallowed hard. “Part of me probably always will a little.”
Menon’s expression turned murderous instantly.
Not at me.
At the idea itself.
“She was wrong.”
“I know.”
“She failed you.”
I hesitated.
Then sighed softly.
“Maybe. But I think she thought she was protecting me in her own weird emotionally constipated Coven way.”
That startled a rough laugh out of him.
“Emotionally constipated?”
“You met my mother.”
“Fair.”
I smiled faintly before tracing my fingers slowly across the glowing runes beneath his chest.
The markings brightened immediately beneath my touch.
Beautiful.
