"Then what did you mean?" She's fully sitting up now, and there's something wounded in her eyes. "What are you talking about, Sean? What do you mean, the Council…"
“I—” I run a hand through my hair. “There’s more to this marriage than what was explained to you, Maeve. On my side, anyway?—”
“Then explain it to me.” Her voice is hard and cold, all the warmth in it gone. I can see the hurt mixing with anger on her face. "Explain to me how being married to me is a punishment."
All the tenderness in my wife’s face is gone. It’s as if everything we’ve shared today has vanished.
And I know how I explain this to her might make all the difference in what happens next.
26
MAEVE
The world seems to slow down as I wait for Sean to continue. He’s sitting there looking at me as if he knows he’s fucked up, and dread is pooling in my stomach like ice water.
"When the Council arranged this marriage," he says again, his voice carefully controlled, "it wasn't just a business arrangement. It was my punishment."
The word hits me again, feeling like a physical blow. "Punishment?"
“I told you I failed the job. Cormac Brennan. They were angry that I didn’t kill him. That I fired a warning shot and kept him from getting into that car with his wife and child. As far as they were concerned, I should have accepted the collateral damage. So they told me they were giving me a chance to prove my loyalty—by marrying you.”
He won't meet my eyes now, and that somehow makes it worse. “They knew I didn’t want to be married. They knew I wouldn’t want an eighteen-year-old as a wife. And they knew I had no desire to go and manage some rich dead man’s estate. It was a punishment, Maeve, but…”
I shake my head, not wanting to hear this. But I can’t stop it. I’ve wanted the truth from him so many times, and now I’m getting it.
“I didn’t know how you would make me feel. I was angry and resentful at first. I’ve never wanted connections or emotions or… anything like this. They knew that. It was a reminder that I work for them, that I don't get to make my own choices."
Each word is a knife sliding between my ribs. A punishment. I was a punishment. All this time, every moment we've shared, every touch, every kiss—it was all built on the foundation of me being something he was forced to endure.
"That's why you didn't want me," I hear myself say, and my voice sounds distant, disconnected. "That's why you kept pushing me away. Because I was yourpunishment."
“At first, yes, but…”
“That’s why you wouldn’t touch me on our wedding night. Why you talked about an annulment. You wanted a way out?—”
“I wanted a way out foryou.”
“For you, too!” I explode. “You can’t tell me that you didn’t want out of this, that you wouldn’t have taken a means to get away from theeighteen-year-old orphantheyforcedyou to marry.”
"It's not like that anymore?—"
“They told you this?” I demand. “From the start?”
He closes his eyes. "Yes."
I can feel my heart shattering. It all makes more sense now. His anger, his coldness, the way he couldn’t stand to look at or touch me. How horrible our wedding day was, and so many of the days after it. Every stiff interaction, every cold word—it was all because he was being forced to marry me. Because I was an obligation. A burden. A punishment for his failures.
"Maeve, please listen to me." He reaches for me, but I pull away, scrambling to the edge of the bed. "That was then. Things are different now. I want you now. What we have is real?—"
"Is it?" I laugh, and the sound is bitter even to my own ears. "Or are you just making the best of a bad situation? Deciding that if you're stuck with me anyway, you might as well fuck me?"
"Don't do that." His voice hardens. "Don't reduce what we have to that."
"Then what is it, Sean?" I'm yelling now, all the hurt and humiliation boiling over. This feels like the last straw, the final betrayal. "You've spent weeks pushing me away, telling me you're wrong for me, telling me that we could get an annulment once you kill Brennan. And now, now that you've finally slept with me, you want me to believe it's real? That I'm not just the punishment you've decided to make the most of?"
“You’re not that any longer.” He swallows hard, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. “Not since… fuck, Maeve, I don’t know. I don’t know when it changed. It’s been slow… gradual. I don’t know how to do this, I told you that! But at some point, you weren’t just that any longer, and I don’t feel that way now. I?—”
He shakes his head, his jaw tight. "You're the first person who's ever made me want something more than violence and revenge. The first person who's made me think I could be something other than what the Council made me. But I didn't know how to handle that, didn't know how to want you without feeling like I was taking advantage of the situation."
