I clench my hands to keep them from shaking.
"So don't stand there and take all of this like it belongs to you. Some of it is mine, and I hate that.I hate it, Torgan,” I nearly spit the words. “I came here to be furious with you, and I can't even do that properly."
"Then be furious with me." His voice stays low. "You keeping quiet didn't put the potion in Mirelle's cup. I bought it. I carried it. I promised you the truth and lied in the same breath. Those aren't the same thing. Don't carry mine." He reaches for me.
"Don't tell me what to carry!" I shout, stepping back. My voice cracks across the courtyard. Somewhere in the Hall, a curtain moves at an upstairs window.
I put one hand flat against my chest and force myself quieter.
"Mirelle canceled her wedding dress in my shop this morning. She smiled at me like I was a clerk she'd never met and counted out coins for a dress she has wanted since before I knew her. I love her, Torgan. And that version of her was gonethis morning. She was standing right in front of me, and she was gone."
My eyes burn. I blink hard.
"It happened with both of us watching over it. You carried it. I watched you buy it. Every silence you kept, I kept one beside it. Do you understand?"
He comes one step closer, then stops.Smart. I don't know whether I want him near me or whether I want to shove him down the steps.
"Lissy," he says. "What do you need from me?"
My throat tightens. "I don't know."
There. The plain, awful truth.
I look at him. His face is wrecked. This is still Torgan. The male who sat in the corner chair for all those fittings. The male who brought me pain medicine and drank the tea after pretending he wouldn't. The male who danced with me, kissed me, and held me like I mattered.
How can all of that be true at the same time as this?
"I think I love you," I say, my voice waving. "I think I've loved you since the courtyard. Maybe before then."
His breath catches at my words. Hope comes into his eyes so quickly that I have to look away.
"But women in my family have done this before. A Sunfell dressmaker loves a lord, and then everything breaks. I grew up believing it. This whole year, I've told myself it was only a story. Grammy's superstition. A reminder of what would happen if I ever left myselfhope."
I take a step back.
"Then I finally let myself want something. One thing.You. And three days later, Mirelle walks into my shop without a heart. Is this it? Is this how the story starts?"
He shakes his head. "No," he whispers it like a prayer.
I stare at him. "You don't know that."
"Neither do you."
"Exactly." My voice shakes. "I don't know what I believe. And until I do... I can't… Ican’t…"
He goes very still.
I hate that I know what that means now. I hurt him. The knowledge lands in my chest, and I still can't take the words back.
"I can't," I say again.
I turn toward the doors and hike up my skirts, taking the steps two at a time. I’m running away, but I don’t care. Because to stay would be to complicate things even more than they are.
He doesn't follow me. He doesn't call my name. Somehow, that hurts worse, because it means he thinks I should leave.
And maybe I should.
And maybe the curse is real and we’re being pushed away by force I can’t even comprehend.
