“Alyss is right.” Levit sighed. Though it sounded more relieved than frustrated. “How is it that whenever there’s trouble, you’re always at the center?”
“Lucky, I guess?” Eira flashed a wild grin. She could feel it unhinge slightly, the expression sliding on her face into a shape she hadn’t made before. Alyss blinked twice over. Even Levit seemed startled that she was capable of making such an expression. “I’m going to bed.”
“Do you want to talk?” Alyss gripped her hand tightly, as though she wasn’t going to accept no for an answer.
“I promise I will in the morning with my dearest of friends.” Eira squeezed her fingers and started for her door. Maybe she had learned something throughout it all. She wasn’t going to shut her friends out, even when the world was trying to smother her.
Throughout the whole interaction, Cullen hovered, looking incredibly uncomfortable. Eira ignored him, passing by without so much as a glance on her way to her room. Everything was exactly as she’d left it. Everything was familiar. But the world had tilted yet again. She’d taken another step tonight on a path that Eira wasn’t sure when she’d started down.
“Where am I going?” Eira whispered.No, the better question was,what am I becoming?
A flurry of four knocks, a pause, and then two slow knocks interrupted her thoughts. Her blood ran cold.Marcus. Eira opened the door to reveal Cullen.
“Forgive me?”
“What am I forgiving you for?” Eira tilted her head slightly. “There’s quite the list.”
“May I come in?” he asked.
“No.”
A wounded expression crossed his features. Yet he was still determined. “Forgive me for using Marcus’s knock. But it was the only way I knew to ensure you’d answer.”
“Never do it again,” Eira said softly. He was beginning to invent ways to hurt her and she hated it.
“Fair. I’m sorry I didn’t help you more tonight.” He had the audacity to look guilty, to stare at her with those honeyed eyes of his. She went to close the door in his face and he stopped it. Eira glared up at him.
“Are you sorry for sleeping with me whenyou knewyou were engaged?”
His lips parted and he stared at her in a stunned silence. “You…” Then his brow twisted with anger. “My father.”
“Good thing he told me. Were you going to keep it a secret forever?”
“I will sort it out.”
“Sort it out?This isn’t something that can be ‘sorted out.’ Arrangements have been made, another person hangs in the balance here,” she growled, glancing around to make sure the others had gone to bed. Maybe she had learned more than just to rely on her friends. Maybe she’d killed some of her impulses alongside Ferro tonight. “You can’t just act like this is nothing. Lavette matters, too.”
“I don’t care about her,” he protested.
“You don’tloveher, maybe.” Eira ached even at the implication that he loved her still. The pain only grew as she tried to defend Lavette. She had to think of others. She had to be more thoughtful and calculating than she had ever been before. “But you shouldcareabout her, think about her, as a decent person would. And that means you can’t continue this—this—” she choked on the word “—affair.”
“It’s not an affair,” he objected.
“You are promised to her!”
“But I willnotmarry her.”
“Tell your father that.”
“I have.” He pushed on the door, opening it just slightly more. “I love you, Eira. Only you. Nothing will change that.”
Eira shook her head. The wounds were too fresh, too deep. “Cullen, I can’t do this. Please, I am trying to learn from every mistake I’ve made, which are many. I’m trying to be better.”
“You are already enough,” he whispered.
“No, I’m not. I’m not looking for your validation, I’m looking for your support. Do I have it?” She looked him dead in the eyes.
“Always.”
