Page 128 of The Washwoman at the River’s End

My chest tightens, something dangerous unfolding inside it. A need I don’t recognize. A yearning to be looked at like this forever. To be wanted by a man like him.

No, not a man like him. Just him.

He holds up his hand, his scarred palm lined with black.

“How weak of a man am I,” his voice cracks, defeat in every syllable, “that I still want you, even when I have no choice but to end your life.”

Tears sting my eyes, even as I have to press my legs together to ease some of the ache building between them. “I told you, it's okay. I know you have to kill me. I won’t try to change that. But,” I swallow. “But until it’s time to finish what you came here to do, you can allow yourself to want me, too.”

The words feel dangerous as soon as they leave my lips, wisps floating away like dandelion seeds in the wind, but it’s too late to take them back.

He steps back as if I've burned him.

“You dinnae understand,” he says, his voice pained. “If I'm going to—” he cuts off, his jaw tightening. “I need to hate you, but I can't. I don't.”

His confession carves straight into my heart, a deep sorrow for the battle he’s fighting over what he views as right. Tears sting my eyes, blurring the edges of him.

“Then don't,” I whisper.

He closes his eyes, shaking his head as he drops down by the fire. I follow him, placing my hand on his sleeve, begging him to listen to me with my touch. “If you have to kill me, so be it. It’s what I’ve wanted, Brennen—rest. You’d be easing my suffering, in the end.”

The words should feel heavier than they do, but they don’t. It has been a long time since the thought of dying scared me more than the thought of living forever, but I feel it now, creeping into my chest.

“You could ease my suffering now, too,” I say, somehow brave and terrified to speak the words aloud all at once.

He doesn’t answer, his chest heaving as he continues to stare at my hand like the touch is too much and not enough in the same breath, but something in his eyes tells me he wants to say more. That he’s holding back.

My heart aches at the war he’s clearly fighting, and I scoot closer. “It’s been a very, very long time since anyone has looked at me with anything other than hatred and revulsion. Just as long since anyone touched me with anything other than anger.”

I scoot even closer when he doesn’t respond, my knee now almost touching his thigh, and he looks at that inch of space between us.

“You don't need to hate yourself for whatever it is you're feeling. For your vow. Or for wanting me.” A flush creeps up my neck, and I have to look away, afraid that if I see his resolve to hate me strengthen, it will destroy me. “Because even knowing what you have to do, I want you, too.”

He closes his eyes, breaths shaking. “You’ve really only been touched in anger for over a century?” he asks, his voice rough.

I don't answer. I don't need to. I know what was in that journal he read, the details of all the ways people have tried to kill me. That's not the half of it.

His hand lifts, the space between his palm and my cheek almost nothing, as if he’s going to damn it all and touch me. My breath catches, my heart pounding, but his fingers curl into a tight fist. With a slow exhale, Brennen shakes his head.

He pulls his hand away fully, grabbing his wood carving from the ground and squeezing it in his fist, as if he needs something to hold onto, anything, other than me.

And it hurts more than anything written in that journal had.

56

BRENNEN

My cock throbs. I’m so hard it aches, but I refuse to go to my tent, even if all I want right now is to take myself in my palm and ease the pressure. I hang my head in my hands, forcing myself to picture Marsaili’s face. To replace Bea’s red curls in my mind with blonde. Blue-grey with brown.

Because how can I betray her memory like this? How can I be having these thoughts?

It's not that I think Marsaili would fault me for having feelings for someone else. I'm certain she'd want me to be happy. She would want me to experience all that life and love have to offer.

But not with her. Even if Bea didn’t mean to do what she did.

I dig my knife into my wood carving, but I cannae focus, slicing too large a piece out of the wing.

The wind stirs, and Bea looks up from where she’s drawing in the mud, searching the river for the clothes that will soon follow. We haven’t spoken again, and it nearly kills me. The defeat in her posture. The pain in her eyes.