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Stella braced herself. Jak definitely didn’t have the look of a man happy to be reuniting with his lost love. He also had his thoughts and emotions locked down so tightly that she’d have to use power to pry him open, which was the last thing she was going to do, given the state of relations—or non-relations—between them.
She shivered again, though this time not with physical cold. Here they stood, once again on the windswept walls of CastleWindroven, where Jak had first proposed to her, awkwardly and—in hindsight—with reluctance. He’d been forced into it by her well-meaning family. Well, whatever reason had brought him back, she had been trained in proper manners and it was up to her to welcome their guests. Her mother would expect nothing less.
Keeping her expression impassive, shielding as tightly as she knew how, she inclined her head to Jak. For some reason, though Zynda had shapeshifted to human form, she and Marskal hadn’t come to greet her. That was Stella’s fault, that she hadn’t seen where they went, with all her attention focused on Jak. “Welcome back to Castle Windroven, Jakral Konyngrr,” she said formally, aware of the bite of frost in her tone.
He eyed her warily. “Can we go somewhere to talk?”
“Of course, please come in. You must be freezing. Forgive my manners.” She turned, gracefully gesturing the way, as if Jak didn’t know it. “Zynda and Marskal must have gone inside already.”
“Staying out of the line of fire, no doubt,” Jak muttered.
She cast him a sideways glance, hesitating in her step, and he seized her arm in a viselike grip over her velvet sleeve. “No, no—you’re not wriggling out of this,” he said under his breath, guiding her through a doorway and into a tower where a couple of guards warmed themselves over a brazier of coals. “Gentlemen, can you give us a moment?” Jak asked with a jaunty grin, the edge in his voice spurring them to leave more than the words did.
Stella slipped out of his grip and stepped to the far side of the brazier, pretending to warm her hands. “I’m not angry,” she said calmly. “I’m glad we can be friends again.”
Arrested, he gave her a speaking stare. “Is that what you think is happening?”
Cold dread turned her stomach. “I had hoped that we could be friends again, but perhaps that was foolish. I know, perhaps better than anyone, that no one can go back in time. When I agreed to let you court me—” And here she had to stop and calm herself. “—I was aware that I’d be risking our lifelong friendship, perhaps destroy it forever.”
When he only continued to stare at her, she hastened on. “I really am very sorry, Jak, for everything. I understand why you left me and if you can’t forgive me. If you’re here to tell me again how badly I behaved, then I’ll listen. I owe you that much.”
“You know,” Jak said in a low voice, almost conversational, except for that blade-sharp edge to it, “for an empath and mind-reader, you are remarkably dense.”
She bristled at that, perilously close to losing her resolve to be polite, far too close to losing her temper and railing at him. If he hadn’tinsistedon all of this in the first place, they wouldn’t be here in this unbearably awkward confrontation. “I apologize for that, too,” she replied stiffly. “In fact, if you hate me so much now, I don’t understand why—”
Jak cursed viciously, dashing the brazier aside in a sudden, violent sweep of his arm that had fiery coals flying across the small room. In one step, he was on her, bracing his hands on either side of her, caging her between his body and the wall, not quite touching her, but close enough that she couldn’t escape. “I was going to do this better this time,” Jak practically snarled, “but you donotmake things easy.”
No, she didn’t. It was a bare, startling fact about herself. This was why she should live alone in a tower. “Let me go, Jak,” she said evenly, only a slight tremble in her voice.
He barked out a humorless laugh, his breath—whiskey-scented, for all that it was morning—wafting warm and unbearably enticing over her face. She wanted nothing morethan for him to kiss her. Her heart broke that he never would again.
“Jak,” she chided gently, “it’s far too early in the day for you to have been drinking.”
“What is wrong with me,” he wondered, gaze traveling over her face, “that I find you reprimanding me about drinking so erotic?”
Her breath caught painfully. “Please don’t say things like that.”
He frowned, studying her. “Why not? And, before you answer, I needed the fortitude.”
“For what?” she breathed, wondering if shehadbeen hopelessly dense, terrified to hope.
With a disgruntled snort, Jak flipped his cloak back over his shoulders and pointed a finger at her. “Don’t move.” He dug into his pocket, then glared fiercely at her. “Kneeling turned out to be bad luck last time and I’m too much of a superstitious sailor to risk that again.” He held out something gleaming to her on his open palm. “I didn’t leave because you told me to go—no power on earth could make me leave you and it fucking pisses me off no end that you could believe I did—I went to get this.”
In wonder, she plucked the ring from his palm, the dark jewel glittering bright even in the dim light. “What is it—the stone, I mean?”
“It’s a black diamond, from the far southern reaches of the world,” he answered softly.
“I didn’t know diamonds could be black,” she said, her voice reverent with awe, her heart unwilling to process what this might mean. The stone was both opaque and brilliantly full of light. Rainbows seemed to dance in its shadowed core.
“They’re incredibly rare and correspondingly valuable,” Jak told her.
She raised a brow. “Where did you get it?”
He half-grinned, half-grimaced. “I told you I had resources put by. And I obtained this fair and square from some unsavory types, who… ah, didn’t deserve to keep it.”
“Pirates,” she said knowingly. “Kooncelund pirates.”
“The point is, it belongs to me. Or it did. Now I’m giving it to you.”
