He smiled, then turned to me.
I held my breath, attempting to prevent myself from indulging in his inebriating scent that was seeping into my thoughts.
“You said you don’t love the man you’re betrothed to,” he said, heavy brow furrowing.
“I don’t,” I answered. In fact, I hated him. The only thought I spared for that bastard was to wonder why he created Whiterok, and how it was tied to Hylos’s missing people.
“Will you not have to …” Marry him if I returned to land.
“I likely will,” I answered.
“Why not flee instead?”
He said it so easily. As if it was an obvious answer. But it wasn’t.
“I will need to tell my father.” About the sirens. “I have a duty to—”
His eyes widened as he understood my meaning. Then he clasped my hand unexpectedly.
“What are you—” My hand seemed so small in his warm, rough palm.
“Elowyn, what has Oakhaven ever done for you?”
It was another good point. This man was full of them today. WhathadOakhaven done for me? Besides turn its back on me. Or was that only my father’s crime?
But had no one wondered where the only child of the king had disappeared to? Did no one beseech him to spare my mother’s life?
I wanted to be angry. Bitter, even. But another thought bent my wrathful mind: what about the children in the dilapidated shacks? What about the little girls like Lumina waiting for an unimaginable life? What would that life look like if sirens attacked their home? If their fathers and brothers died in another senseless war.
I pulled my hand from his, despite wanting to keep it there desperately.
“Oakhaven doesn’t have to do anything for me to protect it. That is not how responsibility works.”
His honey-colored eyes searched my face as his jaw set.
“The person waiting for me—”
“It’s fine,” I interrupted. “You don’t owe me an explanation.”
“It’s my daughter.” He grimaced with the words.
Daughter?
“I am not a good man.” He shook his head, looking at his hands as if they had committed unthinkable crimes.
“Why on earth would you ever say that?” I asked. Arlo was a good man. What he did for his men, what he did for Alistar. He was kind and noble. Maybe morose at times, but he had a fine heart.
“Ihada wife.”
“You monster,” I said with a little laugh.
“No, you don’t understand.” He looked down at me, pain settling in his features. “I took her as my wife because I was a selfish young fool who thought with his prick instead of his head. As soon she fell pregnant, we wed.”
“And that makes you immoral how?” I asked.
“I forgot my place in this world. My mother … she had plans for me. I knew that. She was always very strict and when she found out I had married, she had my wife murdered.”
The look of devastation on his face made me want to collect him in my arms and save him from that fate. Even though it had already come to pass.
