Her eyes stung. “You think I am afraid of you?”
He said nothing.
“You look at me,” she whispered, “and tell me what it was you saw in my face that made you believe that.”
His silence sliced her open.
“You are… you are angry with yourself,” she murmured. “You are frightened of yourself, Cassian. Not me.”
He flinched. She reached for him, but he moved his shoulder back.
“I am not good for you,” he said hoarsely. “I told you that.”
“I am not a woman who frightens easily; you know that.”
“I do not want to hear your reassurances,” he said sharply. “Not when you trembled.”
“I trembled because Lord Falchester grabbed me!” she cried. “Because that wretched man laid his hands on me. Not because of you.”
He shook his head. “You saw me hit him. Again and again,”
“Because you feared what he might do to me!”
“Because I lost myself,” he said, voice raw. “Because the moment I saw him trapping you, pulling you—” He stopped abruptly, breath unsteady.
Her heart broke for him, but he had already closed the door inside himself.
“Cassian,” she whispered. “Please. Look at me.”
He turned slightly, but his eyes were shuttered, distant.
“You should leave,” he said. “You should rest. You deserve peace, Isabella. Not… me.”
She stared at him, stunned. How easy it was for him to decide he could live without her, deciding for her that he was not worthy of her.
“If you are so eager to live like a ghost,” she said, her voice shaking, “then perhaps you deserve to be one. I shall not attempt to make you into what you’re not. If you think yourself a monster without control, then so be it.”
He flinched as though struck.
Isabella felt tears rise, hot and blinding, but she absolutely refused to let him see them fall.
So, she spun away, choking back a sob, and fled from the room before her heart could shatter loudly enough for him to hear it.
Cassian did not rise when the door shut behind Isabella. He merely sat there motionless, rigid, his hands braced on his knees as her retreating footsteps faded down the corridor.
Good,he told himself. Let her leave angry. Anger would keep her safe from him. Anger would keep her from returning. She would not try to soothe him again. She would not look at him with those wide, wounded eyes that cut him deeper than any bladeever had, and she would not try to reach inside him where no one had any right to look.
This silence and distance were what they should have had from the beginning.
He should never have allowed himself to glance at her twice that night of the fencing competition, or perhaps, he should never have spoken to her, should never have let her into his workshop. He should’ve frightened her off that night as she stepped over the threshold, he never let anyone through with her wide eyes and stubborn chin and her infuriating, disarming goodness.
He should have?—
Cassian exhaled sharply and pushed his fingers through his hair, rubbing his palms against his eyes afterwards until stars burst behind his lids.
“It does not matter. None of it matters,” he groaned to himself.
He was better off alone. The world was safer that way.
