AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Wait.” He caught me by the wrist. “Where are you going?”
“Away.”
“You aren’t staying?”
“Why would I stay? That’s right, to drag you back to Constantinople.” I let out a scathing laugh. “You might have to murder me.”
He dropped my wrist. “No.”
Emotion burned in my throat like a hot coal. “You told me you would do anything for me. Was that an empty promise?”
“No,” he repeated, in a hoarse whisper. When he bowed his head, his hair shadowed his face. “Ardis, I won’t fight you. I swear that I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You already did, when you called me a liar.”
“I apologize. I—I have been a bastard.”
My teeth ached from clenching my jaw. I forced myself to exhale. “You still believe I might be an assassin?”
He hesitated. “Maybe.”
“And you’re still apologizing to me and refusing to fight me?”
“Yes.”
“God, Wendel.” I rubbed tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand. “You aren’t making it easy to hate you.”
“Even if you aren’t an assassin, you are still Thorsten’s daughter.” He raked his hand through his hair. “It’s difficult for me to accept. My memories of him are…”
“What?”
“Painful.”
“I’m not my father. I’ve never met him.”
He lifted his gaze, his eyes a luminous green. “Please forgive me.”
I turned my back on him. It was too hard to look at him. He stepped behind me and wrapped his arms around my shoulders. My traitorous body melted against his. He bent so that his face rested in the curve between my shoulder and my neck. His lips lingered there like the hope of a kiss.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “When I saw the locket, I panicked. Even now, it’s hard for me to talk about this with fear throttling me. It feels like an iron fist around my throat.”
I tried to face him, but his arms tightened around me. Maybe he found it easier to tell the truth without looking into my eyes.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
“More than I wish to admit.”
My heart ached for him, imagining all the pain he must have endured over the years. “I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have said some of the things that I did. You’re not just a pretty boy with a fucked-up past.”
“But you do think I’m pretty?”
“Devastatingly handsome.”
“Good.”
He was back to being sarcastic, though now I knew it was nothing more than a mask to hide the scars that ran so deep.
22
