Caspian’s hand moved.
Stopped.
Cosima saw that too.
“This is why they are moving quickly,” she said.
“Because it hurts?”
“Because your Mark understands the question before the room has even asked it. And it answers without your permission.”
“Wonderful.”
“No,” she said. “It is about the farthest possible thing from wonderful.”
She was standing beside me while the boy she loved offered to be good to me and asked me not to choose him if choosing him meant being trapped or in pain.
It was probably cruel, but I needed to know.
I looked at Cosima.
“Would he truly be good to me?”
Cosima’s face broke.
Tears filled her eyes.
“Yes,” she said. “He would be the best thing you could ask for.”
She gave the answer at once, with no protection left for herself.
“But that is not the question,” she added.
Caspian lowered his head.
I felt the ache of that without the Mark.
“What is the question?” I asked.
Cosima’s gaze came back to mine, unshed tears making her eyes too bright.
“Whether good is enough when the choice has been built around you.”
That was the thing I had not wanted to say, because saying it made Caspian harder to refuse and impossible to accept.
He would be good to me.
I believed that.
The belief sat in me like a bruise.
“I can be kind to you,” Caspian said.
The words were too plain for the room.
Cosima looked away.
I wished she had not.
