I’m disgusting.
The stone in my chest sinks deeper, cutting off my breath as the words echo in my head.
I’m fucking disgusting.
“What’s wrong?” Lyn holds my face in her hands.
She guides me to a bench and eases me down onto it. Then she calls out to one of our bodyguards, “Bring some water.”
She drops to her knees in front of me. I struggle to breathe; tears keep falling. I’m so pathetic I’m crying after doing something I knew was wrong.
Disgusting.
Pathetic.
Weak.
“Hey. Talk to me. What happened? Did he hurt you?”
I shake my head. How do I tell her what happened? How do I say out loud that I’m so despicable I kissed a man I hate? How do I say out loud that I cheated on a man who has only ever given me love and loyalty?
I cheated on Salvario.
I’m a fucking cheater.
The chorus of voices settles with that one last whisper. The tears stop as if a tap has been turned off. The weight in my chest doesn’t lift, instead, it sinks deeper, burying itself somewhere I can’t reach. The guilt goes numb, like a limb I’ve been leaning on for too long. Now I can breathe again through this soothingnumbness. The dead around me must be resting in this same soothing numbness.
I rise from the bench. Lyn rises from the floor.
“Let’s go home.” The words come out like a whisper from a ghost.
She nods, her hand moving in slow circles on my arm.
Chapter 32
Elowen
A faint sound reaches me, like a knock.But it’s very far away, as if it belongs to another world. And it must, the world where everyone else lives.
I’m here, in my own world, where the only sound is the one my fingers are creating. I don’t feel these notes. I don’t even recognize this composition. It’s just flowing out of my steadily beating, distant heart. There’s a faint ache in my fingers and hands, as faint as the knocking.
The knocking stops, and I sink back into the peace of the music flowing from my keyboard, until someone snatches it away and drags me into the world I want to hide from.
Salvario stands in front of me. He looks worried. For me. For someone who deserves not an ounce of that worry.
“You’ve been playing for three hours. Why didn’t you open the door?”
He sits on the table in front of my couch, cradling my face in his hands. “What’s wrong, Princess?”
“I went to see Hunter.”
His expression changes from worry to anger.
“He kissed me. I kissed him back.”
His hands fall from my face. The pain in his expression throws open the doors of guilt and contempt, and they crumble me to rubble.
“I cheated on you.” I break down in front of him, sobbing, clutching my chest as unbearable pain tears through it. “I cheated on you.”
