“Then hear it from mine. I need to be alone right now.” Elloven straightened and took her deepest breath yet, but she was far from composed.
“But you’re not alone. He’s there.”
Taven’s hesitation forced Jesstin’s irritation back to the surface. “Do you ever respect her wishes, Considine? Ever?”
“I love her.” His feeble half-answer was muffled. “If you want me to leave, Ellie, then that’s what I’ll do, but I need to hear you say it.”
“Leave.” She held her head high, almost in pride, despite that Taven couldn’t see her. “Leave, Taven. Please.”
“Very well.” Taven’s disappointment resounded. He was clearly trying to sound pitiful, and he was, just not the way he’d intended. “We’ll speak later, my love.”
Elloven’s self-possessed gaze dissolved as the echoes of his boots became memory.
“Elloven, look at me.”
Jesstin had one hand on her shoulder, light and uncommitted, like someone who had no experience dealing with the emotions of others and would rather be anywhere else.
But that wasn’t fair of her, because he had helped her. He’d taken her somewhere she could be calm and safe. He’d counted with her. He hadn’t tried to stop her like Taven would. He’d kept her focused on the numbers until she could return to the moment.
“Your face,” she whispered. Blood trickled from a gash on his cheekbone.
Jesstin reached up and drew his hand back. “Ah. Right.”
She’d done that. Whatever chaos she’d rained on the amphitheater had caused him actual harm, and how many others? “Let me clean it for you.”
“No need.” Jesstin flexed his neck with a tense squint. He wasn’t worried anymore; he was angry. “We need to talk about what they did to you out there.”
“You don’t understand,” she said, knowing they were the wrong words, divisive words designed to push him even further away. She’d learned the tactic as a means of self-protection, because nothing good in her life ever lasted. He wouldn’t be there at all if she hadn’t required an escort on a night that had come to belong to another lifetime, another Elloven. Another Jesstin. “You can’t.”
Jesstin’s hand returned to his lap. “I’d wager you can’t either.”
Elloven’s head lifted in surprise.
He smirked, but not like Taven would, filled with condescension. It was a more generic disgust. “What are we doing here, Elloven? Really?”
“You know?—”
“Really.” His jaw ground, and his neck ridged from the tension he was so obviously holding back. “How much of what you’re ‘feeling’ is what others put in your head?”
Elloven was speechless. He thought so little of her, he couldn’t conceive she could think for herself? “I don’t expect you to understand, because none of this is a part of you the way it’s a part of me. You shouldn’t be here at all. You wouldn’t be here if not for...”
“You? I haven’t forgotten.” He scratched at the faint stubble along his chin. “Yet, see, there’s a whole barrel of shit you don’t know, shit they’ve kept from you. I am supposed to be here. All of it—the wooing, the spectacle—it’s all a scheme, designed for both of us, and we’ve played right into it.”
“You’re supposed to be here? Do you hear yourself?” He didn’t know what he was talking about. He couldn’t know. Arguing about what he could never grasp was more than she had the heart for. “Do you realize this is the most you’ve said to me since I saved you in the woods?”
“You know what? I’m not doing this with you.” Jesstin moved toward the cart full of drinks and cups. He snatched a bottle without reading it, uncorked it, and drank. “I don’t want to know what happened. I’m not even sure I care.” The lie slipped into his tone, the quick, annoyed twist of his shoulders conveying he realized it too. “But if you feel any remorse for putting me in this situation with you, you’ll remember that when you hurt? I hurt. When you feel pain? It sends me to my knees too. So, if you’ve got a death wish, Elloven, save it for after we’re no longer bonded.”
She clenched through her aches and stood. She’d need a healer, and she doubted it would be hard to find one. Taven would insist on doing it himself, but the thought of him laying even a finger on her made her want to retch. He believed bringing her there would unite them, but being around so many of her people had finally liberated her from the only other person she’d known, besides her mother and Gennady, who connected her to her roots. “Are you aware how your words never match your behavior?”
Jesstin’s cheeks dimpled with his annoyed inhalation.
“Why did you rush to my side out there? Why did you push all others away and take me somewhere no one else could follow?”
He thrust his arm toward the door. Spittle flew from his mouth as he said, “Because I don’t trust a single one of those bastards, and until I know why they’re going to such trouble over you, I can’t risk me. Get it now?”
“No,” Elloven replied as she shook her head. “It’s more than that. You hate me because you need someone to hate. Mathias is gone now, and Sestinn has never cared about you, but you know I do. Who are you without your animosity? Have you considered it? Or have you directed this toward me because you know, despite how you’re treating me, that I’d save you a third, fourth, tenth time if I had to, and not because of some cursed bond? Because I...”
Jesstin’s eyes narrowed briefly before he laughed. “If the next words out of your mouth were going to involve love, let me spare you the humiliation.”
