"So why are you here? You don't want to see me anymore?"
"Of course I want to. If this was different—ifwewere different, if I were a blacksmith and you a healer, we could do as we choose. But we're not, and you have to focus on your people and I have to focus on mine. This entire fucking world is at stake, we can't get distracted now."
She shrugs as if it’s no bother to her. But I know it bothers her, because it bothers me.
“We just have to keep things…in line.”
She lets out a shaky exhale. "Then that's just too bad, Rex."
I don't like where this is going. "And why is that?"
"Because I'm falling in love with you," she says, frankly, as if she'd just dropped a weight that had been on her shoulders for months.
But that weight comes tumbling out of those small hands and crashing down onto my own shoulders, and now I feel like I’m sinking. Plummeting to the bottom of the ocean because the weight is too much for me to overcome. To love me is to be condemned to death.
When I don’t reply, she presses the heels of her hands to her eyes as if I am the most annoying thing in her life. Maybe I am. "I'm falling in love with you! Fuck, Rexxan, I fell for you a year ago. And if you aren't too, then you're right, I do need to stop this going further. But whether you’re ready to acknowledge it or not, I really think you feel the same for me."
Fuck, I've hurt her. An admission of my feelings for her will do nothing more than make this worse. "Then I'm genuinely sorry."
"Is this about the newspapers?"
“You’ve seen them?”
“Of course I’ve seen them. No one gets to say I’m five foot four and get away with it. I’m five foot five and a half.”
"I don't have space in my life to…” fuck, I hate this word, “…loveright now. There's too much on my shoulders already. Nothing needs to change, Ren, we just can’t run away with our feelings. It would be unwise to do that whilst the world is looking to us for guidance and stability.”
She sighs, nodding her agreement and walking off the balcony.
Chapter25
An Ultimatum (Renna)
Islip out of Rexxan’s bedroom at half past midnight.
I don’t know what we’re doing anymore. We’re just colleagues who sleep together, I suppose. No real conversation, just sex. Good sex. Great sex. Fine, it’s mind-bending sex. But I miss him, even though I still see him most days.
I’d just never see him again, but a girl has needs and I’m not willing to sleep with anyone else, and neither is he. And there’s a piece of me who’d rather just have a fraction of Rexxan than none at all. We’ve not argued again, nor have I asked him any more questions. It’s not bitter between us, it’s just not sweet anymore either.
As I trudge out of the forested palace gardens with the ever-present weight on my chest and thundery cloud around my mind, I weigh up whether I actually feel any better than I did when I arrived two hours ago. Maybe I should stop seeing Rexxan altogether. But I don’t want to do that. A shadowy figure outside the palace gardens makes me jump out of my skin.
“Onyx, fucking hell. Let’s not sneak up on women when they’re alone at night, yes?”
Orange-yellow eyes illuminate the black night as we stand beneath the shadows of the trees. “You could kill any man, Renna. What is he doing to you?”
“Who? Rex?”
“Yes.” He says, arms crossed and stance wide like he’s ready to fight someone for me. “He’s clearly doing something to you.”
Tonight he met me in his weird downstairs sex lair and fucked me so hard that I almost cried, but somehow I doubt Onyx will appreciate that little snippet information. “Um…he’s—look, when a man and a woman like each otherverymuch—”
“I know you’re lovers, Rennalya. I’m not fifty. What has he done to you that has you leaving his bedroom at all hours of the night?”
Hold on. He is supposed to be elsewhere. "Thought you were at the party."
"I left because I was worried about you.”
I growl in frustration. "You left another social event because you are worried about me. What's that, the two hundredth one? Stop stifling me and start having fun, for fuck’s sake. Do something for yourself instead of just following me around," I snap, glaring at the sky above me in despair.
