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“Exactly.” His head tilted, giving me a slow nod.
He started walking again and I joined him.
“Beyond that, I came here because I was curious,” he said.
“About?”
“You, in general.” His hand waved up and down the length of me. “What it is about you that has him so enamored. He’s never been so. Not with the thousands of women that have tromped through this castle. If you were any one of those other women, he would have killed you for getting close to Venetia. For thinking you had any right to his time.”
“I don’t have any right to his time.”
“Then you have power you’re refusing to acknowledge.”
I scoffed a chuckle. “I don’t think you quite understand the hatred your father has for me.”
“Hatred, love—they are the same thing, just tilted through a prism differently. The prism got twisted. That doesn’t mean it won’t twist back.”
I gave him a look out of the side of my eye. “Bullshit.”
He chuckled. “What?”
“You’ve never truly hated someone.” I turned my face fully toward him. “Or maybe it’s that you’ve never truly loved anyone.”
He paused, his lips pursing for a long second as we walked. “I suppose it really doesn’t matter where that line between hate and love is. The fact of the matter is that whether or not he hates you or loves you, my father is obsessed with you. Like I said, by all rights, you should be dead right now.”
I averted my face to the side as a wry smile lifted the edges of my lips. Apparently, my indestructible skin wasn’t a fact that Damen had shared with his son. Hating me, but still protecting me—like a favorite toy he broke that was now worthless, but he still refused to share.
“Look.” Leo pointed in front of us to a break in the outer hedge. “The exit.”
“Not the center.”
“Apparently not today.”
We slowed as we approached the break in the thick evergreens.
Leo paused at the entrance to the maze. “It was interesting meeting you, Ada.” He inclined his head to me. “You’ll excuse me.”
He stepped out past the edge of the maze, walking toward one of the side doors to the castle.
Stopped at the edge of the maze, I stared at his back. His strides long like Damen’s, his crisp dark jacket which perfectly lined his shoulders looked like it could have been plucked straight from Damen’s expensive wardrobe.
He disappeared into the castle.
“Leonardo tell you anything of worth?”
I jumped.
Damen appeared from around the far corner of the maze, striding toward me.
“You were out here?”
He nodded.
“Were you creeping around the outside of the maze listening to us?”
He shrugged as he came to a stop in front of me. “I knew Leo was in the maze, then I saw you went in. I thought it best I was in the vicinity.”
“In case he tried to hurt me?”
