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My smile is small and bitter. “Always does.” Any time she is punished (usually in more creative ways, like being forced to clean the stables at home, or being denied permission to attend a ball or participate in a swordship tournament—things that matter to her), the punishments sting me. Sting my heart.
No matter what wrong Ensley does, I feel this … urge to protect her from Daein, the way he wishes to protect me from her ferocity.
Ensley just wants to protect herself. She cares none for me, and judges Daein for sacrificing his princeship to save me and bring me back to life.
Once, she said ‘I would have lived even if she had died’.
It’s true. Even if I had stayed dead on the palace floor after birthing her, she would have lived—and have a prince as a father.That, she values more than having a human mother (well, she thinks I’m human, but I doubt the truth of it all would really change much of her opinion of me. She would likely loathe me more for being born of litalf royalty as a Halfling, and somehow still failed to be anything more than something broken).
“You coddle her too much,” Daein says, his eyes clearing of clouds, clearing into those sharp and studious diamonds I recognise from the first time I ever saw him. “She disrespects you, her mother, and acts too much like a petulant child at her age. I demand more from her. And I will not tolerate her dismissal of my expectations.”
The corner of my mouth flicks up, bitter, and I draw away from him. With my bare-footed steps back, his hand slips away from me and drops to his side with a flop of defeat.
Still, his gaze is that of a hunter’s, watching me, always watching me.
“So it’s all about you, is it?” I ask, setting aside the now-cool teacup on a stone table. I perch myself on its round edge. “You punish her because she dismisses your rules, not because she disrespects me.”
“Both.” His answer is curt and simple. He wears no shame in it. No apology. That’s Daein. I would never expect otherwise from him.
The smile falls from my face, leaving my expression as severe as I feel inside. “I don’t think you should have hit her.”
For a long, quiet moment, his crystalline eyes pierce into me,throughme. I wait it out, feeling the familiar penetration of his study of me.
“Noted,” he clips after too many heartbeats.
I nod, looking down at the stone floor of the balcony.
He adds sharply, “But my punishment will extend.” I look up at him, meet his unwavering gaze, his look that says he is not to be argued with, one I recognise all too well. “She will not be allowed to see that Halfling before we leave for home.”
“That Halfling,” I mutter under my breath, followed by a weary sigh. “That Halfling is named Affay. That other Halfling is our daughter. And another is your wife—”
Daein advances on me swiftly, that fast blurry way that only fae can move. He’s in front of me in a blink, his hand firm on my mouth, shushing me.
The warning in his eyes is dark.
We’re not supposed to talk about it—about me, what I really am. I guess mentioning it out in the open air of the balcony wasn’t such a bright idea.
Against the firmness of his hand, I manage a slight nod to show that I understand. His fingers slip away from my face, finding my hip instead, but the ferocity in his eyes doesn’t leave.
I reach up to him, sliding a stray black tendril away from his bronzed forehead, his beautiful skin, so smooth and soft. His face shutters under the rarity of my affection.
“I heard a rumour last night,” I murmur, my voice low and quiet for the private moment between us.
Hardened all over again, his face turns to stone and reveals that he suspects exactly what I heard. Something he had hoped I wouldn’t have learned untilhedecided otherwise. Always with the need to be in control.
“Word travels fast in these lands,” he tells me darkly. “Litalves are fond of their gossip, much like the humans are.”
I give him no reaction besides running my fingertips gently down the side of his cheek, down his neck (he shudders ever so slightly), before I rest my hand on his hard, muscular shoulder. I can almost feel the dampness from his inky markings against my palm, as though they are forever on the edge of almost-dry.
I fix my blank stare up at him. “So it’s true? That’s why Elden left so soon?”
His silence is my answer. He speaks no more of it. Shuts me out.
I sigh softly before I dip my hand to his forearm and hold gently. “You never tell me anything, Daein.”
“Only what I decide you need to know.”
My mouth flattens into a grim line as I drop my gaze to his peachy-toned mouth, a mouth that was hot all over my body throughout most of the Quiet, a mouth that professes to love me in action and words, yet hides so much from me.
