“Your father believed it was the only way to keep you safe.”
“Safe?” The word came out sharp, almost a laugh. “I’ve spent twenty-one years alone in this tower. I’ve never seen the ocean up close. Never walked through a forest. Never touched another person until you climbed through my window.” Tears blurred her vision. “I thought it was for my protection. I thought I was being loved. But I was just being... stored. Like?—”
She couldn’t finish the sentence.
He crossed the room in three strides and pulled her into his arms.
She broke.
All the tears she hadn’t cried—for years of loneliness, for a nursemaid who’d kept secrets even as she held Liora close, for a father she’d imagined as noble and protective rather than frightened and desperate—came flooding out in great, heaving sobs.
He held her through all of it. He didn’t try to comfort her with words or tell her it would be all right. He just wrapped his arms around her and let her fall apart against his chest, his chin resting on top of her head, his heartbeat steady beneath her ear.
“He left me,” she gasped between sobs. “He put me here when I was a baby and he left me.”
“I know.”
“He never came back. Never sent a message. Never—” She choked on the words. “He couldn’t even look at me. The recording said I looked too much like my mother, and he couldn’t bear to stay.”
His arms tightened around her.
“I’ve been making excuses for him my whole life. Telling myself he must have had a reason. Telling myself he would come for me eventually. But he abandoned me, Baylin. He locked me in a cage and walked away and never looked back.”
“Yes.”
“And Susan… Susan was supposed to love me?—”
“She did love you.” His voice was rough. “The recordings made that clear. She loved you more than anything.”
“Then why didn’t she tell me? Why did she let me believe—” She pulled back to look at him, her face streaked with tears. “I’ve been so angry at Ari. So frustrated with the restrictions, the rules, the constant monitoring. But Ari was just following orders. The real prison was built by people who claimed they were protecting me.”
He cupped her face in his hands, his thumbs brushing the tears from her cheeks. “They were trying to protect you. In the only way they knew how.”
“But they were wrong.” The words came out fierce, almost savage. “They were wrong to hide me here. Wrong to keep the truth from me. Wrong to decide that ignorance was better than freedom.”
“Yes,” he said simply. “They were.”
The agreement surprised her. She’d expected him to soften it somehow, to find excuses for her father’s choices or explanations for Susan’s silence. But he just looked at her with those steady green eyes and agreed.
“They loved you,” he continued. “But love doesn’t always lead to right choices. Sometimes the people who care about us the most are the ones who cage us the tightest.”
He was still holding her face in his hands. Still looking at her with that intensity that made her heart race even through the fog of grief and shock. She became aware, suddenly, of how close they were standing. Of the heat radiating from his body. Of the way his gaze had dropped, just for a moment, to her lips.
“I don’t want to think anymore,” she whispered. “Not about my father, or Susan, or what my blood can do. I just want...”
She trailed off, not sure how to finish the sentence. What did she want?
Him. She wanted him. She wanted the solid reality of his presence, and the way he made her feel seen and valued and real. She wanted to lose herself in something that wasn’t grief or betrayal or the crushing weight of twenty-one years of lies.
“Liora.” His voice was rough. “You’re upset. This isn’t?—”
She kissed him, raw and desperate. She pressed herself against him, her hands fisting in the fabric of his shirt, her mouth demanding against his. He resisted for a heartbeat, maybe two, and then something in him seemed to break.
His arms came around her like iron bands. He lifted her effortlessly, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, gasping at the feel of him pressed against her. His mouth traced fire down her jaw, her throat, the sensitive hollow where her pulse hammered.
“We should stop,” he growled against her skin.
“I don’t want to stop.”
