Yes… despite everything, perhaps some good will come from this marriage. The only good, as far as I can see.
Ronan was not the indomitable force he liked to pretend he was. He was not without emotions, not a bulwark against the rising tide that might never break. He presented a cold, detached front because it was the easier thing to do, but underneath it all, he struggled and felt confusion, pain, and fear like any man.
This marriage was one such example of that.
It was easy to tell himself that this marriage would be a simple thing, made so because Ronan planned on treating Thalia and her daughter as if they did not exist. The wedding was done, they were here now and that wasn’t going to change. But if he was able to avoid them entirely, perhaps in time he could forget them… and they could forget him.
He knew this would not work how he needed it to. As large as this castle was, they were bound to run into one another. Their worlds had collided and he could not escape that no matter how hard he tried.
Do I even want to escape such a thing? Might there be a world where…
Ronan shook his head, refusing to go down that path. No good could come from growing close to Thalia or her daughter, and only pain would follow such measures as that.
A shame too, because there was a small part of him that didn’t hate Thalia like he might have wished. In fact, as with the first time he saw her, Ronan was still intrigued. She was confident and self-assured. She wasn’t weak-minded, nor did she seem the type to give in to expectation or social pressure. She was her own woman, and he appreciated her for that. What was more, that she wasn’t terrified of him as so many others were… again, Ronan was intrigued.
That she was beautiful too did not help. But it was a beauty that clashed horribly with his own hideous visage and tormented soul. A pairing that could never and should never and would never work.
Then there was her daughter. As Ronan considered the little girl, he felt a smile tugging at his lips which he forced back. Again, that she was not scared of him was a sensation he didn’t even realize he needed or wanted. That she was curious, excited, and that she wanted to get to know him.
No… better that she not. Better for her. Better for me. Better that I do as I have promised and pretend they don’t exist.
Ronan committed himself to this mode of operation for the following hour, his eyes starting to bleed and his head throbbing from the pain of reading through documents that bored him beyond measure.
And, as he worked, the natural silence found in his empty castle was broken by voices in the distance. Laughter…
His head snapped up as he listened to it. It was soft, beaten back by the winds which slashed against the castle’s walls, but it was there. Laughter heard in his home, perhaps for the first time in ten years.
Despite himself, he rose from behind his desk and left his office, following the laughter through the halls, down the stairs, and across the foyer in the direction of the dining room. The laughter grew with each step taken, life infused through his home and seeming to carry him.
He came to a pause when he reached the edges of the dining room, being sure to stay hidden in shadow so as not to be seen.
It was as he guessed. Thalia and Olivia dining together, chatting and laughing and enjoying each other’s company in their new home. Olivia was standing on the chair, her blue eyes the size of dinner plates as she reached for various plates of food, crying out excitedly because this was unlike anything she had ever seen before. And Thalia, pretending to scold her, laughing all the while, love seen in her eyes as she looked upon the girl that was not her daughter, but whom she treated as one anyway.
As he watched them, Ronan felt a stabbing pain in his stomach unlike anything he’d felt before. It felt almost like loneliness… a yearning to join them in ways that were once anathema to him.
His wife and her daughter were a family of two, and he knew to look at them that would never change.But if he was to join them, might they accept him? Would they even want such a thing?
He hesitated in the shadows, very nearly walking into the dining room to join his wife and her daughter. Hewantedto, although he refused to admit why. A lifetime spent avoiding companionship, thinking such things weak and beneath him—better for everyone if he not dare to even try. And yet…
Ronan looked away, ignoring the way his stomach twisted, telling himself this was for the best. This marriage was for convenience only and he would never have what those two shared. And still, he told himself he did not want such a thing.Better for all involved…
He stormed away from the dining room, the laughter dying behind him. The first few days of this new arrangement would be hard; he had no doubt. But if he did as he must, avoiding Thalia and Olivia, they would soon forget him as he would them.
And then, finally, things would go back to how they had been. Alone, cut off from the world, and better off for it.
Ten
“He is by no means cruel,” Thalia explained, needing it to be heard and believed because it was the truth, even if such truths were hard to convince. “Certainly not the monster everyone seems to think.”
Her aunt looked around the back garden, her nose curling as her eyes swept over the dead trees and overgrown hedges and general lack of care given to the grounds. It matched the castle perfectly, a sight that in no way invited warmth or suggested such a thing was possible. Indeed, Thalia had visited graveyards with more life.
“Are you sure about that?” her aunt asked, still searching the lifeless grounds. “The way he keeps his home suggests otherwise.”
“I did not marry the man for his skills as a horticulturalist,” Thalia scoffed. “Nor am I one to judge a person based on howthey live. If I was, I might not have very nice things to say about myself either.”
Her aunt winced. “I did not mean it like that.”
“I know you didn’t,” Thalia eased her. “But I am quite sick of everyone assuming they know everything about my husband for no reason other than what they are told. Rumors that don’t have so much as a grain of truth to them.”
