Hope sparked in my chest. “He doesn’t blame me for what happened?”
Aiden’s jaw clenched. “He still thinks it would’ve been better if you’d let Korvin torture him instead of giving up the date.”
“You would’ve done the same thing in my position.”
“I would’ve lied my way out.”
I barked out a bitter laugh. “Renwell always knows when someone is lying.”
“He’s not a god, princess.”
My lip curled. “You forget who put me in your cell. Why would he do that if he didn’t think I was just the right key to unlock your secrets? You even said it yourself.”
“Yes, I did,” Aiden said softly. “I thought it was much too convenient that such a beautiful, intriguing woman ended up in my cell. I thought perhaps hedidrecognize me in his torture room, and he knew what my weakness would be when his fists didn’t find one.”
My heart shrank in on itself like a flower hiding from the night. Renwell had admitted to figuring out Aiden’s identity before I did. Another secret I’d kept from my mentor. But Aiden didn’t need to know that. Why defend myself when I’d still done the unforgivable in his eyes? Yet, he continued to defend his own unforgivable crime.
“You didn’t recognize me, even though you knew my mother,” I blurted out, then immediately wished I could call the words back. They made me sound weak and desperate. I knew I didn’t look like her, but it still hurt.
Something flickered in Aiden’s eyes. Moments drifted by as I became acutely aware of how his fist wrapped around my finger. How his dark hair fluttered over his drawn brow. How my knee brushed his.
My stomach quivered.
I was casting about for something else to yell at him for when he murmured, “You’re more like your mother than you think.” He glanced down at my captured finger. “She always had dirt under her fingernails, too. I never asked her why.”
Tears burned suddenly in my throat. Grief was strange. Days would pass without a single tear shed, then a little reminder of her, of who she’d been, would hit me so hard it felt like she’d left me yesterday.
“She loved to garden,” I whispered. “Flowers. Her favorites were lilies. She was always trying to grow different colors.”
Why was I telling him this? He didn’t need to know. He hadn’t cared to ask back then, so why would he care now?
Suddenly, Aiden dipped his head and placed a featherlight kiss on my fingertip.
Chapter 10
Kiera
My heart tripped over itself.My lips parted, but no sound came out.
Aiden frowned, as if surprised he’d done such a thing, and released my hand.
We couldn’t keep doing this. Hating each other one minute, sharing kisses and painful memories the next.
“I am truly sorry,” he said in that deep voice that reminded me of his singing. “I wish I could’ve saved her.”
I peered into his deep green eyes and saw only sincerity. It shook the shields around my heart like a battering ram.
Why didn’t you save her then? What really happened that night? What were her last words? Did she regret what she’d done? Did she want us to know the truth? Why, why, did she do it?
The questions piled up at the tip of my tongue, but my voice refused to release them.
Aiden shook his head at me. “Is it truly easier to hate me than to ask me for the truth? Because it’s there, waiting for you to want it. I wish it were the same for the truth I seek.”
The walls around my heart shuddered again. But I ordered them to hold. I couldn’t do this again. The last time I’d tried to tell the truth, my whole world had crumbled around me.
He might paint a portrait of my mother that I could never unsee. And that was if I trusted him to tell me everything accurately.
One breath, two breaths, three.
