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“I won’t fucking stay and listen to you throwing your happiness away. Or listen to you telling me he will get away with this because you’re in love with him.”
I scramble to my feet. “Adar. Please. Wait. I’m not in love with him!”
He stops.
“I’m only trying to convince myself that my family is right,” I whisper. “That I have to accept a few things, compromise. That marriage isn’t really about love. You know that, too. You are a King. Or used to be.”
He turns his head and gazes at me, half submerged in the water. It’s lapping at his tail, washing the mud off, and as I look, I see crimson.
I clap a hand over my mouth, horror filling me. “Gods… Your tail.”
The wound… it never healed. It’s deeper now, wider, an open gash down his tail. Blood mingles with the mud and the water.
He glances down at it, then sets his jaw, brows drawing together. “It’s nothing.”
“This is it. I’m taking you to the palace.”
“You’re mad.” He gives a short bark of laughter.
“Maybe so. But I’m not leaving you here like this.”
“I don’t want your pity,” he snarls softly. “Didn’t I say so?”
“When will you see that it’s not that this is?”
He sighs. “I don’t know what this is. Am I a pastime for you? Did you kiss me because your prince is a double-faced snake?”
“No, I…”
“And now I’m a friend who will tell you to throw your life away and be with a man who doesn’t love you. well, that man is not me!”
I stare at him. He stares back, panting, his cheeks flushed, his mouth open as if to say more but nothing else comes forth.
“Adar…”
“Go away, princess. Go back to your palace and your princes. Just… think of what you want. Who you want. Before you hand your future over to someone who won’t care. Before you entrust your heart with someone who isn’t worthy.”
Entrust your heart…
“Don’t think your family knows what is best for you,” he says. “My brother Gadal sold me to the Empress. He looked after his interests first.”
“My family isn’t like your brother.”
“Are you sure?” He turns back toward the water. “If I knew that you were throwing your heart away, I’d have fought harder for it, cursed or not.”
Why do we keep fighting, Adar and I? And it’s not exactly fighting, more like… one of us always leaves with parting words that hurt.
Is he really jealous? Am I being cruel, telling him about Iason? It’s obvious by now that we can’t be friends.
Friends don’t want to kiss each other.
Friends don’t lose their breath every time they look at each other.
Lightning.
Going right through you.
But the thought of not seeing Adar again, of not caring whether he’s wounded, whether he lives or dies, is impossible.
