“You admired a monster.”
Chapter Thirteen: Nora
Julian just… stares at me.
Seconds pass.
Long, thick, stunned seconds where he doesn’t breathe, doesn’t blink, doesn’t move. His chest is frozen mid-rise. His eyes are fixed on mine, wide and unblinking as a deer’s in the sudden glare of a lantern, as if waiting for me to take the words back. As if the truth I have just spoken is a wave that will recede if he stays still long enough.
And then.
He shakes his head.
Slowly.
Sharply.
Disbelieving.
His chin drops. His jaw tightens. His eyes close for a moment, then open, as if he is hoping the world will have rearranged itself while he wasn’t looking.
“I can’t believe this,” he says, the words quiet, almost to himself.
I didn’t need to ask if he’d believed me. Even if he hadn’t said it out loud, his face had already given me the answer. His jaw is tight. His eyes wouldn’t meet mine. And that quick, sharp shake of his head tells me everything.
His face is not the face of a man who is horrified. It is not the face of a man who is grieving for the wife he did not know, thechildhood he could not see. It is the face of a man who has been inconvenienced. Who has been asked to believe something that does not fit into the story he has told himself about the world.
He isn’t shocked for me.
He is shockedatme.
A man shocked for you would lean in. Would ask questions. Would want to know more. Would hold your hand and sayI am so sorry you went through that.
A man shocked at you leans back. He shakes his head. He looks for someone else to blame.
He looks right past me, toward Maeve and Kieran, his eyes hard.
The hardness is new. I have seen Julian angry before—frustrated, irritated, impatient. But this is different. This is the hardness of a man who has decided that the woman in front of him is not the woman he married, and that someone else must be responsible.
“Did they put this in your head?” he snaps. “Poisoning you against your own family? What have you been telling her? How dare you take advantage of her when she’s vulnerable?”
Vulnerable.
The word is a weapon. He is using it to dismiss me, to diminish me, to frame my choices as the result of manipulation rather than conviction. I am not a woman who has made a decision. I am a vulnerable woman who has been led astray.
Maeve inhales sharply. I feel the intake of breath behind me, the shift in her posture, the gathering of words she is about to unleash.
“You son of—”
“They didn’t tell me anything,” I cut in.
My voice is harder than I’ve ever heard it. Colder.
The cold is new. I have been cold before—the cold of the stoop, the cold of the locked door, the cold of hunger whistlingthrough the hollow of my belly. But that cold was forced upon me. This cold I am choosing.
“They listened.” I hold his gaze, unwavering. “They believed me.”
Julian’s head snaps back to me. He blinks, as if I’ve slapped him with the wordbelieved.
