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Another soft brush of a hand swept over her cheek, tucking away the frizzing strand. She caught his hand before he could move it away, and pressed it to the side of her face.
“I thought I was meant to be out here consoling you and murmuring apologies at your feet.” Her bright gaze lifted up to his, no doubt still shining with the evidence of tears she could not free.
“Now that is a sight I would pay to see.” The mask of his anger was cracking, giving way to the neutrality that he often used to hide behind. His palm was hot against her cheek, a welcomed contrast to the early morning and bitter stone under her thin nightdress. Even when she dropped her hand away from his, his touch held firm to cup her.
“The queens are your sisters?” he continued on his next breath.
All Ace could do was nod and gaze up into his hazel eyes with the little slide of holy fire.
“I’msorry,” he whispered, sweeping his thumb along her cheek. Her heart stupidly skipped a beat. “I wish you would have told me.”
“Would you have changed your mind about helping me?”
His soft touch fell away, leaving her cheek exposed to the cold air. “No, but I may have been more sympathetic.”
A small giggle erupted from Ace’s throat, dissolving some of the tension with it. She touched her lips with her fingertips to keep in the sudden outburst. Shelby’s lips twitched, threatening to break through his mask.
“What?” he asked.
“You sympathetic?”
“I can be sensitive to someone else’s feelings.”
Ace arched a brow.
“When I want to be.”
“Exactly.” Her smile felt bittersweet at best. “I’m not so sure that if I’d told you at the start that you would have even cared.”
Shelby tipped his head up toward the tree above them. With one long arm, he reached up and gently pulled a golden leaf from its branch and held it in his hand. His pointer finger and thumb gently rubbed at its edges as if it was a security blanket while he held it up to the eastern sun.
At this angle, Ace could admire the strong line of his jaw. There was a dotting of hair that was growing into a shadow up his cheeks. She wondered if she touched it how rough it would feel under her palm. Her fingers itched to move but knowing her future husband sat just on the other side of the doors forced her to ignore the desire. They’d already touched too much.
Satisfied that he’d examined the leaf thoroughly, he let it drift down to the earth, watching until it settled by their feet. Shelby was already fully dressed. Black pants tucked neatly into new polished boots—either magic made or borrowed from their new friend. The sleeves of his forest green shirt, made from some sort of corduroy that seemed too heavy even for this fall day, were cuffed just before his elbow. Every button had been perfectly buttoned all the way up to his neck where his Adam’s apple bobbed.
“I don’t hate them.” It was Ace’s turn to break the silence. “I mean, I did. I don’t know… maybe I do.” Her teeth sank painfully into her lip. “Sometimes I hate them and other times I’m disconnected. I don’t care about them or what they were to me at some point. It’s like…” She drew a line with her toe in the dirt. “It’s like we all died and then one day woke up as different people. ExceptI’mthe one who died.”
Heat lined up along Ace’s arm. Shelby slid across the bench until their sides carefully touched.
“I honestly can’t even imagine. Do you want to talk about it?”
Perhaps it was time. Though the images of that terrible night dared to resurface in vivid dream-like sequences behind her eyelids, she owed Shelby answers she’d refused to give him ever before.
“Do you ever wonder how the queens received their power?”
He tilted his head in consideration. “I assumed it was of the gods will that the Fae would be pushed out of Pasia.”
“But why them? What would have made them so worthy?”
The way his eyes danced back and forth across her face suggested that he was considering the question. A heartbeat passed and then another, no answer easily surfacing between the two.
“They were not chosen by the gods. They chose themselves.” An ick settled in her gut. Nausea roared as her stomach’s immediate response. “It wasn’t a gift the gods bestowed in good grace but a power offered in exchange for great loss.”
His eyes flared. “You were the great loss.”
Was that venom she could hear in his tone? The level of anger that surpassed the erratic shouting and became quiet and deadly.
“Not great enough apparently.”
