Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 67421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
“Stronger than the magic within the Stars of Anhera?”
“It will be. And we will find a way.”
“I should have stayed to listen,” she whispered, her voice filled with self-recrimination. “Then I would have known when you first laid eyes upon me.”
“And I should have told you what I’d believed in the prison before Bannin shouted it from a table.”
“Why did you not?”
She could not know how many times Warrick had asked that of himself. “Shame, to begin. Knowing how I’d wronged you with every word and thought. And I intended to tell you. When we might laugh over it.”
A reluctant smile tugged at her lips. She lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug. “It was rather ridiculous.”
“If it were not about us, yes? And if—” His jaw clenched as painful emotion piled up in his chest. When he continued, his voice had thickened. “To begin, it was only the shame of how mistaken I was. But as I came to know you, came to understand what you were to me… Elina, I would have let you drown. And I would never have known. Never have— I would have let you. You were right there and I would have…”
She touched her fingers to his tortured reflection. “But you did not, Warrick.”
“I came so near. I came so near to losing you. I can hardly bear to face what I intended.” What he’d almost done—or not done, if he hadn’t seen her face. “I would never have known. I would never have known that you were my heart and you would be…” Dead. The devastation of the mere thought choked away the rest. After a long moment he said, “Mayhap there will never come a day when I might laugh about it.”
“One day, you will. I will make certain that you do.”
His throat closed. One day. As if she meant to be a part of his days to come. “You have been betrayed so many times, Elina. I should have taken more care, and placed your fears above my own shame and regret.”
“And I should have waited for you to explain your shame and regret—but never once did I imagine you might have reason to remain silent other than to trick me and then conceal the betrayal from me. Never did I consider what your feelings might be.” Her gaze dropped to the ground. In a small voice, she added, “Since I have met you, I have come to see a selfishness in me that I cannot like.”
“Selfish—? Have you lost your sense, woman?!” It bellowed from him and her gaze shot to his in astonishment. Good. Never did he wish to see Elina lower her eyes in that diminished way again. “You wished to be loved. That is no selfish wish. But beyond what you hoped to feel, what was your purpose? To kill your uncle. To help your people. And the moment—the very moment—I told you of Anhera’s stars, you gave not a thought to your own life. Your only thought was of returning them, to end Galoth’s suffering. Selfish,” he spat out the word like the rubbish it was.
“But I loved you, Warrick. If I knew your character enough to love, I ought to have trusted in you.”
“Why?” he asked bluntly. “Elina, when someone is struck over and over again by the people they love, can you blame them for flinching when someone else they love raises a fist? Even if that person’s intention is only to…” His words trailed off as he wracked his brain. “I cannot think why else to raise a fist.”
Eyes suddenly alight, she said, “Might you raise a fist to the sky to curse the heavens? Might you raise a fist to frighten a cow? Or might you—”
A cow? “Why would—”
“—raise a fist because, whenever you do, that thick muscle in your arm flexes in such a beguiling way?”
“In this beguiling way, wife?” Warrick stretched out his arms and alternated the flex so that she could watch the bounce of his biceps in the mirror.
Elina dissolved into laughter, and Warrick thought his heart might burst. He wrapped his arms around her, and though he held a phantom, he could feel the heat of her flesh, the thrum of her blood, the reverberation of her heart.
His voice was hoarse. “To hear you laugh again, Elina…”
There were no words to describe the feeling within him. Yet likely she felt the same. Her laughter quieted on a shuddering breath and she closed her eyes, hugging herself around her chest, their hands and arms enmeshed.
After a long moment, she asked uncertainly, “So I did not build the fire each night?”
“You thought you did it?” Warrick began to shake with laughter. He’d assumed she hadn’t given any thought to it at all, so accustomed to being helped by her attendants. “Would you not have remembered at least once?”