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“Don’t be fucking stupid, Ella. You know I don’t hate you,” he bites out angrily, his hand twitching like he’s feeling all the tension that’s been gnawing at me.
“Then why not even bother to try? As you’ve said over and over, you’ve spent centuries planning your move. You want everyone to know your death was what ended this, want everyone to know the things they did to you was their end. I get that. But why can’t it be Alton’s end instead, and you just be mine?”
He looks away, his jaw ticking again as he brings his knee up and lets his foot start to bounce, his other hand coming over his lap.
“They spent centuries trying to take you,” he says quietly. “And I had to fight to keep them out of my head. It’s not like they were in the room with me. Didn’t have to be.”
He stands abruptly, and I remain on the ground as he starts pacing. “I showed Kya a fraction of what she thinks she knows about me. She saw a miniscule amount of all they did to torture me mentally and physically.”
His jaw grinds again as he looks at me, and I keep my gaze trained on his face.
“They’d have never known about you at all if Alton hadn’t told them. But he couldn’t remember your face. I’m sure he could when he saw you again, but I kept that from him in there,” he says quietly. “There are days when I have to wonder if I’ve built this place in my mind the way I did that prison. Days that I have to force myself to believe I’m really out, and that I have one last battle I get to fight before I finally have peace.”
“How did you build that prison?” I ask him softly.
“Piece by painstaking piece. One piece a day was all I had the strength for with so much of my offensive powers chained down and the constant war going on. I had to keep them out of my head when they extorted Alton’s bond to me,” he says, laughing humorlessly. “I was too strong for them to keep all of me tamped down. I killed one out of four guards routinely. It’s why I never met any of the ones in charge. They knew I’d make them my one if it was the last thing I ever did.”
“You knew everything about Alton already, didn’t you? About how defective his mind is. Why not tell me?”
He turns his back to me, letting his head hang. “For the same reason Alton hasn’t given you all the information he has on Hannah.”
He looks over his shoulder at me, sad eyes finding mine.
“His mind is fractured. Not entirely defective. Our father believed too much knowledge left you vulnerable to variables you never considered, because you think you know the worst that can happen. It was the thing he said to us the night we were attacked. He felt it coming, but it was too late.”
My breath comes out shakily.
“He believed a man actually learned more when he collected the information on his own, because it was harder to get that information. It made
that information more important then, instead of something acquired too easily and dismissed as something unimportant. You never understand when you simply hear the words.”
He looks so tired when he faces me again.
“I spent centuries falling in love with you, and I never even heard you speak. I dissected each of those repeated scenes, looking for every clue as to who you were, learned to read lips the best I could, and learned all I could about you” he bites out, even as another hot tear rolls down my cheek. “You didn’t even exist yet, and I loved you so much that I lived through hell to save you from their visions, Ella. I don’t fucking hate you,” he says, his voice so raw. “No matter how hard I’ve tried to do exactly that.”
Slowly, I begin to push off the ground, and he takes a step toward me, eyes wild as a growl rumbles in his throat.
“You were supposed to hate me. You can look at me and see I’m a monster—I don’t even have the usual, flawless immortal shell to deceive the eye, Princess. I did almost everything to make you hate me, but I couldn’t ever cross that one line. I wanted that wolf dead. I spared her for you,” he adds angrily. “Because I knew then you’d hate me, and it didn’t make any sense why I couldn’t kill her when that’s exactly what I wanted to happen.”
He runs his hand through his hair again.
“I couldn’t turn my back on you no matter how hard I tried. Hell, I couldn’t even kill an Aquarius. But still I tried, Ella. Did everything else I could to make you hate me.” He glares at me. “You’re supposed to hate me, not toss your bloody heart on the ground at my feet. Do you understand?” he shouts, his voice breaking at the end.
“No,” I say softly as I straighten. “I don’t understand why someone who lived through hell to survive merely wants to die instead of finally living. What’s the point of being strong when you spend all your time envying the weak—”
He steps so close that our bodies brush, and he leans down as he presses me back against a tree, a growl rumbling in his chest as his silver eyes level me.
“Because hope is the most dangerous thing to a man like me, Ella. Not when I had hope ripped out of me time after time again,” he says so quietly I almost can’t hear it.
My breaths rattle a little, a partial growl slipping in to match his as I run my hand up his chest, my eyes staying fixed on his. His forehead presses to mine, his breathing labored as he seems to shake his head.
“When you found out it was my pain and torment that had created your darkness, you were supposed to hate me,” he says so quietly I almost miss it. “You scarcely batted an eye,” he goes on, stepping closer.
My head tilts back, and his hands slide up my sides, roughly pulling me closer to him until our skin is pressed together. His lips lightly brush mine as he continues to speak in that barely audible tone.
“When you saw me, you were supposed to be repulsed,” he says as he drags his lips up my throat. “Yet I smelled your arousal, even before you knew what I was to you,” he continues.
“I hated you a little when you attacked Leah and Roslyn,” I confess, feeling his lips twitch next to mine when they ghost across my mouth again.
