She won't find any.
"You planned this," she says. "All of it."
"Not all of it. I didn't plan the council's mandate. But when it came, I made sure they would match me to you."
"Why?" The word sounds almost accusatory, but the way her features seem to collapse behind it tells me I’m reaching the part of her that matters.
"Because you need to hear what would have happened if I hadn't."
Her brow creases. "What do you mean?"
I take a careful breath. This is the part that requires precision. Because the truth of it is sharp enough to cut, and I need her to understand it without feeling like I'm holding a blade to her throat.
"If I hadn't requested you, your father or the council would have matched you with someone else. Someone who would be on their second or third wife. Someone who would have wanted a virgin bride and feel slighted that they got the ruined Ice Queen." I hold her gaze. "And they would have punished you for it."
The color drains from her face.
"I know they would," I say quietly. "Because your father was already working on a match to Tomaas Linchenko." I don’t need to elaborate on who that is if the way her breath leaves her body is any indication.
Silence. The kind that has a heartbeat.
"I requested you because I wanted you," I say. "But I also requested you because I couldn't stand the thought of someone else having you and treating you like anything less than what you are. I wanted to protect you."
Tanya doesn't move. She just stands there, this extraordinary woman in her white gown with her armor cracking in real time, and I give her the silence she needs because sometimes the most important thing a man can do is shut up and let a personfeel.
Minutes pass. The house is quiet around us. I can hear the faint sound of wind against the windows, the low hum of the refrigerator, the distant rustle of the hedgerows outside.
"You should have told me," she says finally. Her voice is different now. Something bruised and new. "At one of those functions. At any of them. You should have said something."
"Would you have listened?"
She closes her eyes. A breath moves through her, slow and shaky, and when she opens them again, the woman looking at me isn't the one who got out of the car forty minutes ago.
"Probably not," she admits.
"So I waited until you would."
She lets out a sound that's almost a laugh. "You're infuriating."
"I've been told." I desperately want to close the distance between us. It’s only a few feet and yet it somehow still feels like a chasm.
"I mean it. You're calm and patient and you say exactly the right thing and I can't find a single angle in any of it, and it's making me insane."
"Good."
She lets out an exasperated huff. "It's not good. I don't know what to do with someone who isn't trying to play me."
"You could try trusting me."
The one thing no one in her world has ever earned from her. The one thing she's never had reason to give.
She looks at me for a long time. Long enough that I feel it in my chest. That slow, tight ache that I've carried for two years, the one that started the morning I woke up in Prague and found her gone and promised myself I'd find my way back.
"I don't trust anyone," she says, smoothing her hands over the front of her dress in a way I’d bet diamonds is a tell. "It's not personal."
"I know."
"So why are you looking at me like you think I'm going to change my mind?" Her voice has an edge to it again, but this sounds more like exhaustion. Like she has found herself playing a game she didn’t know she was a part of and doesn’t know all the rules.
