Fyn couldn’t understand the pain she caused by choosing it.
“What did she have to show for it?” I tried not to raise my voice, but it was growing harder to resist the urge.
“Youandyour sister.”
She wanted Aelira. She stayed for her and then slipped from us moments after she held me.
I wasn’t the daughter born out of love. No, I was born from hatred that followed her choice. My father forced her to resume her role as his wife. “And if that didn’t destroy her and my family enough… her choice caused an entire war—not one—but two. All of that hatred stemmed from something she could have resisted.”
“She was not responsible for what your father chose to dowith his anger,” Fyn said. “Anyone could understand his fury, but what he did with it was beyond reason.”
“Some of us don’t easily get to choose love, Fyn. There is always a cost. And I don’t wish to pay it.”
“Why do you feel that forcing yourself into this life will spare you? It sounds like a similar fate to me—a life of duty and consequence.”
A single tear rolled down my cheek before I could stop it. I hated anyone seeing me cry. “No one is forcing me.”
“I promised myself I wouldn’t intervene, but being here—seeing you like this I can’t stay quiet anymore.” His voice became a gentle hum. “He doesn’t even look at you like he wants you. You deserve to have someone look at you that way.”
“No one has ever looked at me that way.” Maybe no one ever would.
His eyes slipped closed and a low scoff escaped him. When I waited for his normal jab, it didn’t come.
I glanced down the hall as far-off footsteps sounded, holding still until they faded. “What, you’re not going to make a joke at my expense?”
“Do you think that is all I am capable of?” Annoyance sharpened his words.
Every word he uttered felt as though there was something hidden beneath it.
I needed to see it for myself. “If it’s not all you’re capable of, you can show me what it looks like to be looked at that way.”
“Ashlyn.” Fyn struggled to say my name.
When he spoke it I only wanted to hear it again. “Show me what it looks like, Fyn. Pretend it, if you must.”
“Don’t ask me to do that.”
“I need to know.”
“Stars above,” he grumbled as he scanned the hall.
He stepped closer to me, guiding his hand over my head against the stone wall. The heat from him clung to me, even when he didn’t touch me.
He looked down at me with such intensity—the jade in his eyes seemingly brighter than before.
My stare held his.
It tugged at something too familiar.
It felt like a life I could never be granted, full of laughter shared in a room that was too small.
It made me wish I had stayed when I awoke in the inn instead of running.
I blinked the water out of my eyes.
Everything I hadn’t allowed myself to want was staring back at me.
For months I looked at him without ever allowing him to look back at me.
