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“Like?”
He paused, tears spilling down his cheeks, his lip quaking. “Why don’t you love me?”
I rolled my eyes, turned around, and started walking. “I don’t have time for this.”
“No, no, wait,” he said, and he grabbed my arm and forced me to spin around to look at his teary, red face. “Why don’t you love me? Just answer the question. I can take it.”
“Let go of my arm,” I warned.
“Please,” he said, reaching for my face with his other hand and trying to lean toward me, “Just one kiss, and you’ll know.”
My free hand moved of its own accord, driven entirely by instinct. Before I knew it, I had punched him in the face and sent him staggering onto his arse. He groaned once, squirmed a bit, and tried to sit up. I noticed all the blood pouring down his face before he did. When he felt the surge of warm liquid spilling across his face, he touched it, and his hands came away sticky with blood that steamed in the cold night.
“You… you broke it,” he said.
“I warned you,” I said, taking another step toward him. “And I’m warning you again. Stay thehellaway from me. Is that understood?”
He didn’t respond. All he could do was look at the blood on his hands and try to pinch his nose shut to stop it from bleeding. That, of course, didn’t work, and only caused pain. I decided I’d had enough when he started to cry.
I spun around on my heel and made tracks toward the gatehouse. Lucky for me, Lord Cyr’s wails had attracted the attention of the guards posted by the main gates, allowing me ample opportunity to slip past them and make my way across the bridge with Tallin by my side.
CHAPTERELEVEN
“Huh,” Tallin said, as if he had just learned something.
We were almost to the other side of the bridge. There were no guards, here, only the cold snow, the open air, and the rolling hills and forests that lay ahead. Behind us, Windhelm glowed like a bed of luminous crystals against the dark night. It truly was the most beautiful place in any world, but that alone wasn’t reason enough to keep me tied to it forever.
“Huh?” I asked, echoing.
“Lord Cyr was…kind of a creep,” Tallin said, “If you’ll excuse the parlance.”
“As if I needed more encouragement to get away from this place.”
“We should tell someone… an infraction like that would surely get him disqualified from the competition.”
“Maybe, but the problem remains. Whether it’s Cyr or some other idiot, when the Selection is over, I’ll be forced to marry someone I don’t want to marry.”
“What if you did?”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“Well, I noticed you have your eyes on someone in particular… a certain silver haired, devilishly handsomerakeof a Fae.”
“Valerian?” I scoffed. “Don’t make more out of it than it is.”
“I think I know you well enough to know, at least, when your curiosity has been spiked.”
“It’s literally no more than that.”
“If you say so.”
“I’m not ready forlove, Tallin. I don’t even know if I want it.”
“You don’t?”
“Haven’t we had this conversation before?”
“I can’t say I recall.”
