But by choosing to protect their peace, I found myself constantly sacrificing my own.
The walls around my heart built a little higher with every day that passed as I became something that existed solely for the purpose of pleasing others and making them feel good about themselves even when they actively chose to disrespect boundaries I set for my own peace.
I was done with that shit. My truth, my peace came first now.
“Oh,” he said, laughing it off like I hadn’t surprised him. “Well, you don’t need to hide from me.”
“I don’t?” I asked, tilting my head to the side. Keane had made his intentions for our marriage very clear from the time we both came of age, finding our match to be a pleasing one when I didn’t. While he was kind and sweet and handsome, I’d done everything in my power to dissuade him from wanting to move forward with our betrothal.
“I’m going to be your husband, Margot. You can come to mewhen you need a shoulder to lean on. I wish you’d told me that this had happened. It makes so much sense now when I look back at the way you kept yourself distanced from the rest of us,” Keane said, his statement getting worse with every word.
“Who said I need someone to lean on?” I asked, the bitter smile I offered surprising even me. “I’ve been navigating this on my own for longer than you canimagine. I don’t need you to help me. You don’t even know me, Keane.”
“Margot,” he said, stepping toward me and reaching out to take my hand. “I’ve known you since we were kids.”
“Please don’t touch me,” I snapped as I pulled back, not allowing his touch when I normally might have just suffered it in silence. “Being in my vicinity does not mean you know me. The Covenant deciding that we would be married one day doesn’t mean you have some right to know about my life. Even if it did, they’re fucking gone now, and I have no intention of following through on their edicts for my life.”
Keane’s face fell, his expression dropping into one of horror. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that you deserve to marry someone who is capable of loving you. Who wants to be with you and looks forward to seeing you when they come home every day. That isn’t me, and it isn’t ever going to be me. I am never going to love you, because I don’t have that in me. I don’t intend to marry.”
“Margot,” Keane whispered, the hushed tone of his voice urgent. “Your mother is going to be the new Erotes Tribunal member with your aunt gone. You’re her eldest daughter.”
“My sisters can continue the line when they’re older. My aunt never had children—”
“Not for lack of trying! Do you realize how many decades she spent trying for an heir? Fertility is already dwindling within the Coven—”
“Because of what the Covenant and the Tribunal did to make it that way. I refuse to be beholden to this Coven to fix the wrongsthey committed. If our ability to procreate is going away, then maybe it should! Maybe we’ve committed so many fucking wrongs under their leadership that we deserve to be a dying breed!” I snapped, the volume of my voice carrying through the cavernous stairwell. I was all too aware of the eyes on us as I shouted the condemnation at Keane, hearing the promise of Willow’s voice in my ear.
Screw them. This was their natural consequence, and I’d be damned if they forced me to right their wrongs even after they were gone.
Keane reached for me again, his face gentling. But his hand never made contact with my skin, even when I forced myself not to retreat. Beelzebub’s presence appeared at my side immediately after he crossed the traffic in the stairwell to reach me. He grasped Keane by the wrist, his hand looking enormous on the smaller man’s forearm as he stopped him from making contact. “I believe she asked you not to fucking touch her,” he growled, the menace in those words reserved solely for Keane.
Keane swallowed as he stared up at the archdemon, his gaze traveling to mine. “Am I missing something here?” he asked, the words meant for me. I had no doubt he was putting the pieces together, having seen us together in the Tribunal room and probably having heard the rumors about our conversation in the library.
“It’s not what you think,” I said, forcing through my disdain for touch to reach forward and grasp Beelzebub by the fingers, slowly unwrapping them from Keane’s arm and patting Beelzebub reassuringly as he let that arm drop to his side.
“So you’re not fucking the archdemon?” Keane asked, immediately reverting to the misogynistic bullshit I’d come to expect from everyone but him.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but no, I’m not. I’ve never had any interest in sex. You know that,” I said, offering the stern reminder of all the times he’d offered himself up as an outlet formy magic, as a source for me to feed from in turn. I hadn’t ever taken him up on it.
Keane glanced toward Beelzebub out the side of his eye. “Are you sure he got that memo?”
“He heard me sing,” I offered in the way of explanation, watching as understanding dawned on Keane’s face. He nodded, as if it all suddenly made sense.
Beelzebub snorted, crossing his arms over his chest as a single brow rose. “I’m fairly certain I’m not the only one. I’m just man enough to admit it.”
Keane bristled. “I didn’t need to hear her sing to love her, asshole.”
I rolled my eyes, stepping away and leaving them to bicker amongst themselves. They called after me, but I couldn’t have cared less to continue in that way of conversation. Keane was lost in his foolish claims to love me, so absorbed in theideaof me that he couldn’t even understand you couldn’t love what you did not know, and Beelzebub was just…
Sigh.
It seemed men of all species were obnoxious as Hell.
I didn’t turn back to see if either tried to follow, continuing on my way down the stairs and taking care to appear unbothered to everyone I passed. Gone were the days I prioritized what they thought of me, but old habits were hard to break and the mask that I wore was harder to shed than I wanted to admit.
I rounded the landing two stories down from where I’d left Keane and Beelzebub, a harsh whisper inside my mother’s classroom making me slow on instinct. I didn’t want to face her after I’d fled the Tribunal room; the blood and death around me had been too much for me to bear in my moment of vulnerability.
