Gareth suddenly takes a step forward. “Wait. Last night we… we felt a lot. Was that Ebron? Or was that you and the Hollowborn?”
Her gaze finds a spot on the floor.
“Fuck!” I say, pacing away from her, a wild, reckless energy coursing through my body.
Gareth lunges for the door. Alaric steps in his way. They square off with each other, breathing hard, and Alaric says, “We might not agree with this peace treaty, but we can’t be the reason it fails.”
He’s right. Of course he’s right. But the clear picture emerges in my mind of us beating the Hollowborn to death, and it gives me so much satisfaction that I almost bolt for the door. But I still have too many questions. Harper’s more important right now than that fucker.
Turning back to Harper, I stare at her, my heart twisting. “With us… it was… was it like that with him?”
Her gaze finds mine. “It’s complicated.”
That’s a yes. And no yes has ever hurt as much as this one.
She brings her knees up to her chest, looking strangely vulnerable. Her ankle is still wrapped from the Hollowborn’s gentle care, and there’s sadness and confusion in her face.
Alaric very carefully crosses the room and sits down on the bed across from Harper. “Do you care about us?”
Her head jerks up. “Of course!”
It’s almost pathetic how relieved the three of us look. It’s definitely pathetic how much weight her words take off from my chest. There’s, perhaps, a world where I can accept that she cares for the Hollowborn and us, but there’s no world that I can keep breathing in where she cares about him and not us. Where we have to spend our days with her on our arm, while her heart is with him.
“It’s just,” she begins, then hesitates. “I trust Sevrin. I don’t trust any of you.”
The ripping sensation in my heart makes me curl over, my pulse racing. Her words echo through my mind. She doesn’t trust us. Of course she doesn’t trust us—we’ve never given her areason to. Actually, we’ve given her a hell of a lot of reasons to show her why wecan’tbe trusted.
“I guess that’s it then,” Gareth says. “You’ve chosen him, and we, what, just have a marriage of convenience?”
“That seems like what she wants,” I respond, my tone tough, I hope, and not desperately sad.
But a woman who wants a marriage of convenience with us wouldn’t have fucked me. Wouldn’t have fucked me likethat. Wouldn’t have changed my entire world with her touch. Right?
Alaric lifts a hand to tell us to be quiet, then looks back at Harper. “So, does that mean we have no chance with you? No chance of earning your heart?”
She looks confused. “Do you want my heart?”
“This isn’t going right,” Gareth says angrily, tugging at his hair.
“How can you even ask that?” I bite my cheek so hard I taste blood.
“I don’t know what you want!” she exclaims, a little anger in her voice.
Alaric reaches for her, but then drops his hand. “We want you.”
“How?” she asks.
“Every way,” he explains, frustrated.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” she says.
“It meanseverything,” he says.
“We don’t want you with the Hollowborn,” I add.
“You made that perfectly clear.” There’s both an attitude and frustration in her voice. “But forget him for a minute. Talk about us.”
I scrub a hand down my face. “What do you want to hear? We want you. Period. That’s it. There’s nothing more to it. We want you.”
