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“You want to sail and explore, too,” he pointed out with grinding frustration. “Look at all the work you’ve put into charting those worlds. We’ve talked no end about our plans to visit them.”
“I know that,” she retorted, losing some of her deliberate calm. “What I want and what I can have are two different things, Jak. I’m trying to get you to realize the same for yourself.”
“What does that mean?” he demanded.
“Exactly what I said!” she fired back. “You want all these things, these grand dreams, this… thisfantasyof me and being with me. But when it comes to the reality, you begin to crumble in the face of it.”
“Crumble?” he hissed, deeply insulted. “Did I crumble when I climbed a fucking invisible tower to rescue you? When I fought a tentacle monster in subzero temperatures nearly barehanded to pull you from its grip?”
“No, you didn’t. Because that’s where you shine, Jak. You can take on anything with a blade. I admire that about you and I’m grateful, obviously, that you saved my life all those times, but we’re looking at problems that can’t be solved with a blade.”
“Grateful!” In utter fury, utter devastation that she’d so neatly pinned his own thoughts on his greatest personal failing, that he flung the blade at a painting on the wall, piercing the unknown Avonlidgh ancestor through the eye. “There,” he spat, as if he’d planned that instead of being at the mercy of a murderous impulse, showing her his empty hands. “I’m having this ridiculous argument without a blade. Here I am, facing this problem without a tangible weapon.”
She regarded him sorrowfully. “It is not a ridiculous argument. This is a critical conversation if we’re going to move ahead with this wedding.”
“If?” he nearly shouted. He strode to her and seized her hand, showing her the ring. “If? You said yes. That’s a promise.”
Stella didn’t pull her hand away, but she blanched, clearly battered by the force of his turbulent emotions. Cursing himself for being an insensitive idiot, he dropped the contact and stepped far enough away to give her some mental and emotional space. “I’m sorry, my star,” he said with heartfelt sincerity. “I want to go ahead with this wedding. Please don’t say that you’re having second thoughts.”
She still had her hand out where he’d let go of it, staring at the ring. “It says something, I think,” she said quietly, “that my mother gave you this ring to propose to me with.”
Not this again.“I didn’t have a ring at the time,” he explained with patience and not for the first time. “Ash suggested that you’d like to have one of your grandmother’s rubies. It doesn’t mean anything more than that.”
“You didn’t have a ring because you hadn’t been planning to propose,” she pointed out, twisting the ring around her finger.
No, he hadn’t been. Even though he’d had something saved away, just in case. It wasn’t anywhere he could get to at the moment, because he hadn’t been at all sure of what she wanted. Or, to be perfectly honest with himself, how he would handle things. “I told you, I can get you a different ring. I’m not a prince with the wealth of kingdom behind me and a treasure horde worthy of a dragon to select from, but I’m not without means. I’ll get you a different ring.”
“It’s not the ring, Jak,” she said with regret, twisting the ruby ring off her finger. His heart shattered at the sight. “If you’d been planning to propose, if you had really wanted to marry me, you’d have had the ring already. No,” she said, shaking her head to interrupt his attempt to argue. “I know you, Jak, and you plan things. You had ample opportunity to acquire a ring, if that had been on your mind.”
“Stella…” He was out of his mind with how badly off the rails this argument had gone. “Put the ring back on. We’re getting married.”
Her chin set at its most obstinate, she set the ring on a nearby table. “You’re the one who brought up that this wedding might be a bad idea. And now you’re so angry, I almost can’t bear it.”
“I’m angry because I’m worried about you!” he grated out, manfully attempting to restrain his blazing ire. “That is the only reason I brought it up.”
“Liar!” she spat. “It’s not the only reason you’re so blisteringly angry.”
“It is,” he insisted, regretting that he’d thrown his blade away and clenching his fists to resist drawing another. “People get angry, Stella. That’s a normal thing. I should be allowed to fight with you without my emotions being held against me.”
She plowed past that in her own fury. “Your words and thoughts speak for themselves. Jak, I don’t want our wedding, our marriage to be yet another trial you have toendurefor me. We’re talking about spending our lives together, about finding happiness and joy in a partnership with each other, not some epic challenge where you can prove your heroism—yet again—by suffering to be with me.”
He stilled, overcome with the pain of her unflinching assessment of his motivations. “That is dramatically unfair,” he finally said.
“Is it?” She paced away and back again. “Then why are you so fucking miserable, Jak?”
Stella infrequently cursed, in part because she seldom displayed strong passions, except under rare and intimate circumstances. He supposed he should feel special that this was one, but he didn’t. He set his teeth. “Any unhappiness I have is becauseyouare unhappy. No, don’t interrupt. Let me have my say. It was bad enough spending the entire summer here atWindroven. Yes, at first you were happy to be home, but that only lasted a couple of weeks. Your mother, well intentioned though she is, doesn’t understand who you are and she wears on you. Your siblings love you, but they also wear on you. Soon it will begin to snow, the castle will be bursting at the seams with even more people—many of them upset and anxious about this Dasnarian diplomatic invasion—all trapped inside with their emotions boiling over. That will be an ordeal for you, a trial foryouto endure. That, and that alone, is my sole concern.”
“Liar,” she named him for the third time. Holding up a hand to stop him, she crossed to the bed, slid off the robe, and crawled naked into the covers he’d turned down for her. Drawing them up over her petite breasts—even in his extremity, or perhaps because of it, he longed to cover them with his mouth, to taste her heated flesh—she gave him a forlorn look that chilled him. “Youare unhappy, Jak,” she informed him. “I have no doubt that all of the reasons you list are true, but they are not your sole concern. I won’t be the cause of the misery consuming you, whatever the reason. The wedding is off.”
“Oh really?” he retorted like a complete fool, stunned witless. “Tell your mother that.”
“I will,” she replied evenly. “In the morning. I think you should leave now.”
“Leave?” he echoed, feeling lethally dangerous and mortally wounded at once. “Leave,” he repeated.
“Yes, Jak. You asked me what one thing I want right now? I want you to leave and I’m going to sleep. It should make you happy that I’m following at least one of your orders.”
“Happy,” he snarled, apparently unable to do anything but parrot her astounding word choices.
