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“What are you doing here?” I asked him, more like an accusation.
“When Florence messages me to say you’re in danger, I come.”
“Is this another rule?” I sneered.
“It’s a fact,” he said simply.
I sniffed, feeling everything in me fall. “What do I do?” I whispered, ashamed of how pathetic I sounded.
Valen looked torn but, when he spoke, his voice was cold. “What you were always going to do. Marry Apollo.”
I felt tears leaking from my eyes and gave up even considering what my eyeliner looked like now. “He didn’t give me a choice, Valen.” Why I said it like I thought Valen would give me one, I didn’t know.
Unhelpfully or not, he didn’t. “There wasn’t one,” Valen reminded me.
My heart felt like it was throwing up and breaking and dropping and trying to escape out of my mouth all at once. “I had to say yes…” I muttered, more to myself than him.
“What did you expect, princess?” he asked snidely. “Rose petals adorning your bed, a soft romantic fuck on the rug in front of the fire, him proclaiming his everlasting love for you, then a glass of Champagne with a ring at the bottom? Something sweet and special and private?”
Gone was my sadness and, in its place, Valen had sparked white-hot anger. “Do not talk to me like that,” I commanded as I stood up. “Don’t talk to me like me wanting a different fate is disgusting. Me wishing for a choice is wrong.”
“Why?” he asked as he came to stand as close to me as he could get. He looked down at me and almost dared me to leave my head in the clouds. “None of us have a choice.”
“Does that mean I can’t spend a few moments wishing there was?”
“And what would you have chosen? Huh? If you had this miraculous choice? What would the perfect Harlow Vanguard choose?”
To tell him now seem farcical. To not tell him now seemed like the coward’s option. So, I told him.
“You,” I said as my heart seemed to crack in my chest.
Suddenly, everything I’d thought about that other life with Valen being possible seemed…ridiculous and irrelevant. He was a mighty Angel, above the wishes and desires of mere mortals like me. We may have joked I was a goddess, but I was nothing of the sort. I was a pawn in someone else’s life. This wasn’t my story, it was theirs.
“I’m not a choice, Harlow.”
“Does that mean you wouldn’t?” I asked softly, my voice threatening to crack along with my heart. “Choose me.”
“No amount of wishing, love,” came his strangled reply.
“But if you could, Valen,” I pressed.
It felt like maybe I could continue, I could get on with my life with Apollo, as long as I just knew that it wasn’t all me. That I wasn’t the only one dreaming about a different future.
Yes, I loved Apollo, and I would make it work with him because I had to. I’d thought it was going to be easier now we were getting closer, but my reaction to his surprise proposal told me we still had a way to go.
“Valen?”
“Take a minute to get cleaned up.” His voice wasn’t unkind, but it wasn’t warm. “The pastor is waiting on us for lunch.”
He walked out and I felt my heart go with him. I tried to make it stay, but it wouldn’t. Or couldn’t.
The ring on my finger felt like my chains were back, and this time they tied me directly to Apollo with no question. I was living someone else’s life again and the walls were closing in. And I couldn’t talk to the one person who was supposed to make it all bearable…because it was his life I was living.
Chapter Twelve
I woke the next morning and the first thing I felt was the weight of the ring on my finger where it hadn’t been before. I lifted my hand and breathed out heavily.
It wasn’t overly garish, not compared to the crown I wore on the other hand. I couldn’t complain about that. Apollo had obviously taken into account what he thought my tastes were when choosing it. What I wanted to know was why Valen had seemed so surprised. Valen had known about the crown ring, but not about the engagement ring? Why?
