“He also told me that you had feelings for Chryseis and had been having an affair with her.”
“Then I went and kissed her deliberately in front of you.” He shook his head.
“That didn’t help things. But I know it was a mistake not to tell you about him. I’m sorry. I should have. If I had ... maybe all this would have been avoided. But I thought he was my friend.”
“So did I.”
We sat in silence for a few moments. He seemed to be digesting what I had just told him.
“I’m sorry I kissed her,” he said. “I’m not sure I ever said that to you.”
While I understood why he had done it, it wasn’t an image that I wanted to keep popping up in my head. “Could we not ever talk about it again?”
“Done. What other questions do you have?”
He knew me far too well. “What things are you keeping from me?”
His eyebrows rose. “I have been open with you.”
“You don’t remember? The other night I asked you if you were keeping things from me and you said you were. Things I didn’t need to know.”
“Oh. It was that I was in love with you.”
I wanted to protest that I had needed to know that. That it had changed everything. But I also understood why he hadn’t.
He took my left hand and brought it up to his mouth to press one soft kiss against it. He twirled my wedding ring around my finger. “Do you know why I picked Chalcidian steel for your ring?”
I had assumed that it had been some kind of slight, that I wasn’t worth a precious metal like gold or silver. I shook my head.
“Because it reminded me of you. Made from the same material as your favorite weapon. Strong, resilient, permanent. You don’t shatter under pressure. You endure. What other kind of ring could I choose for my favorite warrior?”
I ordered myself not to cry, but I still felt the lump in my throat that indicated I soon would.
“And it’s engraved with the key pattern because the love I have for you is eternal.”
I felt so small for dismissing the ring. For not understanding its true worth.
For not realizing that he had loved me for so long.
“Nothing to say, wife?” he asked.
“Why do you call me that when I told you it bothered me?” That was something safe. We could discuss that and I wouldn’t dissolve into a pool of tears.
“Because I couldn’t give you the words, every time I called you ‘wife,’ it was my secret way of telling you how much I love you.”
My vision went blurry from the unshed tears that had arrived. “But you called me ‘wife’ when you were mad at me.”
He kissed my hand again. “Even when I was furious with you, even when I was determined to tie you to our bed so that you couldn’t do something completely foolish, I never stopped loving you. No matter how angry I am with you, and I am certain I repeatedly will be in the future, then, now, I always love you.”
There was only one thing to say to that, and I couldn’t. So instead I let the tears burn hot paths down my cheeks.
He reached up to wipe them away. “When I wasn’t thinking of how to escape, I did nothing else but think of you and how I crave you. Icrave your laughter. Your smiles—something you give to me so rarely that it is more precious to me than gold. I crave your thoughts. Your advice. Your opinions. I crave your touch. Your soft mouth on my skin, your sighs when I touch you. The desperate noises you make in the back of your throat when I kiss you and you want more.”
Now my tears were mixed with pangs of desire and it was a strange but heady combination.
“Lia, I have seen your bitterness and anger, your desire for vengeance. And I have seen your delight and kindness and how you care for those you love. There is no part of you that I do not know, that I am not intimately acquainted with. And I love all of it—every piece. The dark and the light.”
He laid his palm on the side of my face and I leaned into it. He ran his thumb over my lower lip and I shuddered in response.
