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She shook her head as if he’d asked a question. “You don’t have to explain. You’ve made your feelings perfectly clear.” Pulling her hand away, she set to eating with determined fervor. “Eat. We don’t need to discuss it further.”
Somehow he seriously doubted that. “Exactlywhathave I made clear?”
“Your feelings about the arcanium,” she replied tersely.
“That’s not an answer, Nic. Explain.”
With a clatter, she threw down her utensil, then flung herself from the chair and paced furiously away and back again. She’d put on the burgundy riding habit again, he realized. Not appropriate for dinner, most likely, but the velvet would be warmer than the silk or the linen dresses. He’d done nothing yet about getting her more clothes to wear. He looked up from his stricken rumination to find her glaring at him in mute fury, fists clenched by her sides, visibly seething.
“Gabriel,” she bit out. “Could we please not do this?”
Carefully, he pushed back from the table, casting a regretful eye over their half-eaten meal, the wine, the candlelight. He’d thought to give her a bit of romance, and he’d been doing all right for a while, he thought, until it went sideways.Until she deliberately destroyed the mood,an uncharitable voice in him growled. Keeping his voice even, he attempted a reply to that non-question. “You might understand me perfectly well, but I’m not so fortunate. What am I not to do?”
With a wordless snarl, she looked as if she’d love nothing better than to hurl something at his head. Visibly reining herself in, she straightened her spine and lifted her chin, pulling that regal poise around her like a cloak. “I am aware,” she said with impressive coolness, given that snarl, “that you are conflicted about being a wizard, and that I am not what you envisioned for your lady wife.”
Uh-oh.This was worse than he’d realized. “That is categorically not true.”
“Don’tlie,” she spat, all the fire in her welling up, the scent of rose-infused wine thick as fresh blood. “Everything in this place speaks of the vision you had. I see it everywhere I look. The pretty master suite with its books and view of the river. This dinner with two place settings and polished silver that—”
“Moon magic,” he interrupted. “My silver requires no polishing.”
“Romance,” she spat without pause. “Honeymooning.” The way she said the words made them drip with distaste. “You never wanted a familiar, and you still don’t.”
Feeling his own temper rise, he picked up the eating knife and tapped it on the table. “I wantyou,” he said, meeting and holding her gaze.
She laughed, full of bitter scorn. “No, you don’t, Gabriel Phel. Not really. You want some ideal of me. The woman you fantasized I’d be when you studied that miniature. Awifeandpartner,” she sneered, as if those would be the worst things possible.
“And you are those things to me,” he replied tightly.
“In your imagination!” she flung back. “Telling me I’m beautiful, and wanting to protect me from the wizards who hurt me, and acting like this is some kind of romantic relationship.”
“Nic…” He flailed, completely at sea. She’d been pleased that he found her beautiful, he hadn’t imagined it. “I don’t understand why you’re so upset.”
“Because!” she nearly screeched, then swallowed hard. Holding back tears.Anyone who hurts you enough to draw tears deserves to die.He’d said that to her not hours ago, and look at him now. “Because at heart you’re revolted by what I am.”
Unable to sit still for this, he pushed to his feet. “Wrong. I meant that you joking about using you like that in the arcanium is revolting, not that you are.”
She laughed, a hysterical edge to it, and briefly dropped her face into her hands. When she met his gaze again, hers was distraught. “Thatiswho and what I am. You can’t divide the two.”
“You are more than a familiar to be used by me,” he said on a harsh whisper, to keep from shouting.
“More? That implies that being a familiar isn’t enough. That if I’m only that, I’m somehow lacking.”
Her tangled logic had him turned around, his head aching from it, the candles smelling too strong. “That’s not what I meant. You had ambitions to be a wizard, and you were disappointed that you turned out to be a familiar. I want more than that for you, too.”
“But Iama familiar! I’m your bonded familiar, which means there are things I crave from you. You might hate that and be revolted by it, but I think you don’t realize howloweringit is for me to crave something from you that you despise me for wanting and despise yourself for wanting, too.” She finished on a harsh sob, pressing her hand to her stomach as if she might be sick. “Do I wish I was a wizard? Yes! With all my heart, but I am not. And it kills me, Gabriel, that you are everything I ever wanted to be, and you scorn it at every turn. I swear, I wish you hadn’t cheated in the trials. It would be easier if I’d been bonded to a wizard who at least planned to use me honestly than to suffer this emotional hot and cold from you.”
It was as if an arrow had thudded through his chest, ripping his heart out. “You don’t mean that.”
She lifted her chin defiantly, eyes glittering with unshed tears. “I do mean it.”
“You’d rather be cruelly used than treated with respect and kindness,” he ground out.
Opening her mouth, she closed it again, but not before her lips wobbled. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “Maybe it’s that I’d know how to do that. I think that… if I were only a pet to you, then maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much when you despise me.”
Shit.Feeling utterly helpless, he went to her, wanting to reach for her. He stopped himself. She held her ground. “I don’t despise you, Nic. I promise. I just want…” Realizing that these words, too, would come out wrong, he let the sentence trail off.
“You want your wholesome Meresin farm girl,” Nic supplied for him, her eyes far too wise. “The sweet young woman who grows oranges and feeds the geese, who’d be your loving wife and companion in all things. Who would bed you with sweet affection and bear you children that you could raise together, until they gave you apple-cheeked grandchildren to dandle on your knee. Someone who would never even think of wanting to kneel for you, who wouldn’t yearn for the silver chains of your arcanium.”
