“I’m bad luck,” he said. “Me whole family is bad luck. I sometimes think that me faither cursed us all with his treason. Ye daenae want to be with me, Skye. This is for the best.”
“Do yereallybelieve that?”
She took a step forward, her eyes fixed on his. Her chest heaved, as if she were having difficulty getting air into her lungs. She watched him closely, a tiny line between her eyebrows.
This time, he let his thoughts get the better of him. Lifting his hand, he pushed the pad of his thumb against that line, gently pressing until her brow relaxed and the line disappeared.
“Aye, I really believe that,” he whispered. “Come on, lass. Ye are too young and clever to frown, are ye nae?”
“Evander, please. Daenae send me away. I am telling ye now, face to face, eye to eye, that I want to stay. Ye promised me a month to make up me mind. Let me stay for the rest of the month.”
He turned away, his gaze sliding away from hers. She kept staring up at him, trying to catch his eye.
“I already wrote to yer braither to tell him that ye were coming home,” he murmured.
She flinched, rocking back on her heels. “What?”
“The message is on its way to him. Ye will leave tomorrow at dawn to ensure that ye can get home before dark. I’ll send an envoy of riders with ye. I want ye to travel in a litter, to be safe, but ye can take the horse I gifted ye. And Blackberry, of course.”
He gave a faint smile. She didn’t return it.
“Ye truly think that I hate ye,” she whispered, almost as if the idea was occurring to her for the first time. “Ye think that I am miserable, and that ye ken better than everybody else.”
“Nay, I only think that ye are still nae yerself. When yer full memory returns, ye will?—”
“I will what?” she interrupted with a biting, mirthless laugh. “I’ll become a different person? If ye are so desperate to have me leave, Evander, then perhaps I should go.”
“Ye are confused,” he insisted, holding her gaze once more. “Ye are afraid. Ye are grateful, perhaps, for what I have done, and ye feel?—”
“I swear that if ye daenae stop telling me how I feel, I’m going to throw something heavy at yer head.”
He gave another faint smile at that. “That’s more like it. That’s the Skye I ken.”
Silence ensued once more. This time, it wasn’t a comfortable, warm kind of silence. There was no possibility in this quiet, no sense of waiting for something to happen naturally. Instead, tension filled the air, almost heavy enough to bite into.
It was the pause of a man standing in the middle of a frozen lake, staring at his feet and watching cracks in the ice spiderweb out around him. Far from the shore, with nobody to help. Gray, snowy sky above and crisp, cracking ice beneath. Cold water below it all, ready to drown…
Evander smiled mirthlessly at that image.
Is there any version of this story where I daenae freeze and drown at the same time? Nay, I daenae think so.
“Ye deserve more than this, Skye,” he said. She’d dropped her gaze to the floor, staring at nothing, but lifted her eyes at that. “Ye deserve to be in a clan at peace, nae torn apart from the inside out. Ye deserve to be with someone who’ll give ye the love ye need. The love yedeserve.Ye deserve a family. Ye deserve happiness. I cannae give ye any of those things.”
She gripped the sides of her skirt, tears glistening in her eyes. “Ye havenae even tried to give me those things.”
“I just cannae, lass.”
“And what about ye?” She took a step forward. She was close enough now for him to wrap his arms around her and hold her close if he wanted.
He didn’t.
“What about me?” he asked.
“Well, what do ye want? What do ye deserve?”
He tilted his head. “I am a laird. Lairds daenae get to want anything. In fact, it’s better if ye daenae, because ye never quite get what ye want.”
“That’s a pessimistic view of the world.”
