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I miss your kindness. I miss feeling something other than loneliness. I miss the way you look at me sometimes when you think I don’t notice.
He swallowed hard. “I’m not yours to miss. And you’re not mine either.”
He knew about Lincoln. Even if I hadn’t made it inappropriately obvious at the dinner table, Grey knew things. But this wasn’tjustabout Lincoln. Realization struck me, and everything fell into place.
I’m not going to fall in love with you. I’m not capable of that.
He didn’t mean he wasn’t capable of love. He meant he wasn’t capable of lovingme.
“You’re in love with someone else. That’s why you didn’t come inside me that night. You felt like you were betraying her.” I knew because I felt like I was betraying Lincoln.
Silence.
I sat up, splashing water all around me, a nervous anticipation winding around my heart. “Is that where you go when you leave here?”
No answer.
“Why won’t you just talk to me? It’s not like I have anyone to tell your secrets to.” I sank back down, defeated.
Grey closed the book and cleared his throat. “There is someone…” His tone went dark. “…and she is worth every crime I’ve ever committed, every scar that marks my flesh, and every sin that darkens my soul.”
Wow. No woman in the world could have competed with that. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to.
My gaze shot to him, my heart racing as I waited for the rest.
“She was taken from me the same way you were taken from Lincoln.”
Oh my god. That was why he hated the Brotherhood so much.
“Who took her? Why couldn’t you stop them?” He was a powerful man—one of the five bloodlines. Surely he could have stopped it.
“I was only nineteen years old when it happened. My father was still alive, so I had no power then.”
If Grey was nineteen, that meant this happened eight years ago. He’d been living without her for eight years. I’d only been without Lincoln for one and it was killing me.
“The king’s wife had passed away a few years before, and—”
I interrupted. “The king?” Holy shit. My head was spinning and I felt like I was going to be sick. “The king chose her?”
Grey simply nodded. “And two months later, he had me thrown in prison for a crime I didn’t commit to be sure I didn’t try to get her back.”
The queen had once belonged to Grey. That was why she never spoke to me. That was why she spent our entire wedding reception chugging champagne.
“She’s so young.”Like me.
“She was twenty when they chose her for Judgment Day. The king was thirty-seven.”
I curled my lip. “Yeah, that’s not weird at all.”
He huffed a laugh. “No one cares who we choose, Lyric. Look at me and you. Power buys a blind eye to morality.”
It was true. It happened every day, younger women with powerful older men.
“How long were you in prison?”
“Long enough for the pain of betrayal to kill both of my parents and to let the need for revenge consume me.” He opened the book again, signaling the conversation was at its end. He looked down at the words then up at me one last time. “In case you’ve ever wondered why I don’t touch you… why I don’t do some of the things that are expected of me… It’s because Lincoln and I, while very different, are very much the same. I promised to keep you safe, and I will. But I won’t do to him what’s been done to me. I won’t break you the way the king broke her.”
What little pieces that were left of my heart shattered—for myself. For Lincoln. For Grey. We were all victims of a wicked game. We were all trapped in a loveless world.
I sank lower into the water as Grey began to read and let his words and voice take me to a place far away from reality. Reality was the last place I wanted to be.
