“He’s felt like…like a friend.”
“I knew his love for you was true, and perhaps I’ve forgotten that. Because he has been selfless toward you. Despite yourcommitment to me, he still helped you. He didn’t have to do that, but he did.”
“Whether his intentions toward me are selfish or not, it doesn’t change anything.”
Callum’s stare was glued to my face now.
“He knows how much I love you.”
He didn’t react to what I said, but his eyes contained an endless depth that reached straight to his soul. He could somehow surround me without lifting a finger, could somehow smother me with love without saying a word. “Do you still need more time?” he asked with a tone of disappointment, like he already knew my answer.
I dropped my gaze. “It’s hard for me to focus on the future when I’m stuck in the past.” I continued to think about everything that had happened, painfully aware that Callum had directly caused it all. “Sometimes I think I’m okay, like right now when I’m looking at you. But then whenever I think about the war, I’m reminded of your hand in it. I don’t want to continue our relationship if it’s always under a cloud of resentment. That’s not fair to you.”
“I will gladly sit in the pouring rain as long as you’re next to me, Lily. I will suffer your storms and hurricanes and your emotional turbulence as long as it takes for you to move past it. I just want us to be together, whether it’s in the sunshine or a freezing blizzard.”
“But what if I never work past it?”
His eyes dropped down.
“What if I can never forgive you?”
He inhaled a slow breath that made his shoulders rise with the air that inflated his lungs. When he let that air release, his massive body seemed to shrink. Invisible chambers inside his body seemed to collapse as he caved in on himself. “I believe in us,” he said quietly. “I believe my actions were reprehensible and terrible, but I believe that our paths were meant to cross. I believe you’re the woman who’s destined for me, that I had to suffer horrible atrocities to find you so my soul could finally rest. So I know you’ll forgive me…eventually.”
15
LILY
The next day, I visited my father in the castle.
He seemed to be fully recovered because I found him working in his study.
I knocked on the open door. “Dad, can you talk?”
He was writing in a hardbound book, but he immediately closed it and set it aside when I walked in. “For you, always.”
I took a seat in the armchair across from his desk, immediately noticing the hint of turmoil in his face. “Everything okay?” I realized it’d been a long time since we’d sat together like this, long before I’d met Callum on that island. It would feel normal…if my circumstances weren’t so dire.
“Yeah, just have a lot on my mind.”
“What could you possibly have on your mind right now?” The kingdom was safe, and no enemies existed who wanted to claim the Southern Isles.
He sat back in the leather chair, his arms moving to the armrests. He propped one elbow on the wood before he scratched his chin underneath his beard. Then he gave me a defeated look like he was exhausted. “We’ll talk about it later.”
“Why?”
He stared me down.
“If I can lead an entire kingdom against invaders, I think I can handle whatever you have to say.”
His fingers interlocked in front of his chest, and he gave a sigh. “Khazmuda has had a hard time coming to terms with Callum’s involvement in the war. He lost good dragons, dragons he’s known a very long time, and he’s not sure if he can accept him as part of our family. He felt bound by his duty to his kin to share this information with them, and they’re equally upset. They wanted to burn him alive, but Khazmuda was able to talk them down from that—not that he wanted to.”
The horror that must have been written all over my face.
My dad shifted his gaze elsewhere, like he didn’t want to look at my heartache.
Now I wished he hadn’t told me. Wished I hadn’t pried.
“I’m sorry, Lily.”
