He glanced down at his arm. “I wanted to keep it as a reminder of when I failed to be there for the woman I love. So that I would never let her down again.”
I nearly choked on my own breath. When he’d said he loved me, I had assumed it was a more recent development. But he was saying that he had felt that way for a long time.
“It’s also why I keep this one.” He rubbed his finger along the scar I’d given him on his throat. “Proof of how much I love you and how desperate I was to be close to you.”
He loved me then? I hadn’t even known who he really was.
Then I recalled what he’d told me in one of our dreams.
I pledge you my sword, my body, my blood. I will protect you and keep you safe.
Then I’d asked him if he would lay down his life for me and he’d said, “Without hesitation.”
Once I’d discovered his true identity, I had assumed he’d said those things to manipulate me, because they’d had a very real effect on me. Convinced myself that he was attempting to trick me into saying that I loved him first so that I’d be bound to him and have to marry him.
Even after the fact, when I knew he hadn’t been trying to trick me, I’d realized that despite the amazing things he’d said, he had never said the actual words of love to me.
And as I sat there, I realized that if he hadn’t known my real identity, maybe the reason he hadn’t said it was because he knew he had to marry someone else. And it would have been wrong for him to give me those words instead of his future wife.
A woman who also happened to be me.
“Why did you come to Locris?” I asked. I knew he hadn’t come to find me and scheme his way into my heart, but I’d never asked him why he’d made the trip.
“I came to see you. I wanted to know who I was going to marry.”
That was why when he had seen Kallisto, he had asked me if I knew where the other princess was. He had been looking for me. “Did someone point me out?”
“No, your people are horrifically loyal. And I could only ask so many times before it would start to sound suspicious.”
“When did you know who I was?”
“When Io told me the night of the harvest festival. Which is why I sent Thrax to retrieve you the next day. But with you being you, I should have known that I would have to come and get you myself.”
“And extort me into marriage.”
“A little bit.”
I was glad the memories I had of him as Jason were pure and true, not calculated.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” I said. My pulse picked up. I wasn’t sure how he would feel about it.
“You can tell me anything.” From the encouraging tone in his voice, I wondered if he thought I was going to admit that I loved him.
But that was something I couldn’t say. “Dolion kissed me.”
He hadn’t been expecting that. “What?”
“I immediately pushed him away and threatened him to not ever touch me again. He told me he had feelings for me, wanted me to run away with him. When he betrayed you, I thought that he had said those things because he was trying to drive a wedge between us. But after he let me go at the Carian camp ...” It made me think his feelings had been real. That he hadn’t been trying to ruin my and Xander’s relationship as part of a plot to ruin Ilion, but had done it solely for himself.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” His calm but deadly voice was not a good sign.
“Because I didn’t want to harm your relationship. I know how much you care about your phratry brothers, and I didn’t want to be the reason that got ruined. If I’d told you—”
“If you’d told me, I would have killed him,” he finished.
“Yes. And there’s more.” I shared with him all the lies Dolion had told me—about why Xander had gone to Locris, that he had always known who I was, that he had set out to manipulate me.
“Now I know why you were so insistent that I had been tricking you.”
