He whips around. “Is this where you compare my dead wife to your dead mother?” he spits. “Is this where we pretend to find common ground?”
The corner of my mouth twitches, not a smile, not even close. Just a fissure in the pain.
“She isn’t dead,” I whisper. “She’s very much alive.”
He goes utterly still.
His hair falls across half his face, but through the curtain I see his blue eye gleam. “But I thought…”
I shake my head slowly, my throat tightening. “No. Not dead. Just not with us. Not with my father. Not with me. She lives in a new city now. With her new husband and their three young children.” My voice wavers, but I don’t look away. “She said my father didn’t make enough money. That our home was too small. That she had given up everything for us… for me.”
My fingers curl at my sides. “She told me that every time she looked at me, she saw the life she could’ve had. The things she forfeited when she became a mother too young. A wife too young.” A humorless exhale escapes me. “I reminded her of every sacrifice she resented.”
Something darkens in Luceran’s expression. He turns to face me fully now.
“But even knowing that, I couldn’t hate her. Once, when I was desperate, when I thought I couldn’t bear the loneliness anymore, I went to find her. I stood on her doorstep with a little bag of clothes and all the hope in the world.” My breath catches. “And she threw me out. Told me not to come back.”
I look down, swallowing the ache that still lives in me, years later. “And still… I couldn’t hate her. Because sometimes even when someone hurts you, when they break your heart clean in two, you do everything you can to piece it back together.” My voice softens. “Even knowing the cracks will always show. Even knowing it will never be whole again. Later, when I was considering moving to the city myself to study, I tried again. I sent her a letter asking if I could stay with her. Just until I found my footing.” I force a tiny, brittle smile. “She never replied. She left only a few things behind. Her wardrobe. A handful of trinkets. Some jewelry.” My throat works around the ache. “Nothing else.”
Slowly, I lift my gaze back to him. “So I found my happy endings in books instead. I read stories about worlds far from mine, about brave girls and kind heroes and love that didn’t have conditions. About places where someone always came for you, where you weren’t left behind.” My eyes sting. “Stories where warmth existed, and magic, and hope.”
Another breath leaves me, shaking.
“I suppose… I suppose that’s why I wanted your library so badly.” My voice dips to a whisper. “It felt like a world I knew. A world that never hurt me.”
Luceran’s expression hardens the moment my voice trails off. Whatever softness had begun to thaw along his features freezes over in an instant. His eyes shutter, going flat and cold as winter stone.
There it is. The wall. The one he drags up whenever anything threatens to touch him.
“Enough,” he mutters.
My heart sinks.
He turns away from me completely, pacing toward the far end of the table as if putting distance between us might erase everything I’ve just said. “Your personal tragedies,” he says with a dismissive flick of his hand, “are irrelevant. They do not concern me.”
The words cut, but I knew they would.
He grips the back of his chair for a moment, shoulders tense, breath shallow.
“You were assigned work,” he growls. “So go do it.”
I swallow, then straighten my spine and nod. Then I turn toward the kitchen door, yet before stepping through it, I force myself to glance back at him.
“And,” I add lightly, “you should know Atilia made your breakfast. I only kept it warm.”
His head lifts a fraction.
“I’ll be sure to pass on your compliments,” I finish.
Before he can answer, before he can snap, or sneer, or silence me, I dip my chin and slip into the kitchen and close the door behind me.
13
Iwake with a yawn that cracks my jaw, stretching until my toes brush the end of the mattress. My ridiculous hair lies across the pillow like a tangled fishing net, red strands clinging to my cheek as I roll onto my side. I rub the sleep-haze from my eyes, blink once, then again, and that is when I see it.
Something sits on the small table beside my bed. Something that most certainly was not there when I collapsed into sleep last night.
I push myself upright so fast the blankets knot around my waist. A book.The book. The one he tore clean down the spine.
