Page 165 of Kingdom of Death and Hope

The guilt inside me is growing with each second I’m silent.

“Sweets?” Kieran sits up, taking me with him.

He cups my face with his hands before I can do anything and makes me look at him.

“Why are you sorry?” he asks again.

“Because I was being so inconsiderate of how hard it was going to be. I was being impatient and kept asking if you had gotten closer, not realizing that there were other spells in there. I thought it was the one spell and that was all,” I reply honestly.

How could I be so naive in this situation.

He runs his thumbs across my cheeks, giving me a small smile. “It’s okay. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to worry, but now I understand that it was a mistake and I won’t do that again.”

Shaking my head, I pull out of his hands. “No, it is me who should keep apologizing. I know you guys have a lot of eyes on you and you can’t work on it every moment of the day. I know that you have to be extremely careful and I keep forgetting that. You don’t have to just worry about Avira but you also have to worry about the guards. If only I knew the language then I could help you.”

“No,” he replies.

“What?” I tilt my head.

“Even if you knew the language I wouldn’t allow you to do it. You’ve seen how Avira reacted when she found out. I am glad you don’t know the language so that you aren’t part of this anymore. If you were trying to help it would put you in more danger, and I wouldn’t be okay with that,” Kieran says. “I would be constantly worried about you and if Avira would come after you.”

“But I helped before,” I point out.

“Yes, you did, but do you know how worried I was the whole time? Every day I woke up worried that something bad was going to happen to you that day and I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.” Kieran locks eyes with me. “It was a constant worry in my mind that you would get taken away and I would have no idea. And then it finally happened. I could feel your fear but I couldn’t do a single thing about it. And when I knew where you were, I couldn’t go to you and get you out. I had to wait until something happened.”

I never knew that was how he felt.

“How come I couldn’t feel it though?” I ask before realization dawns on me. “You kept it hidden? I thought you promised we wouldn’t do that!”

Hurt flashes through me when Kieran looks at me apologetically. I thought something was up when I couldn’t feel his emotions at all. For a while I thought it was just him being able to feel it since he was Fae, but every once in a while I would feel them. And when I did it made me think he may not be feeling too many emotions strongly.

But I was wrong.

He was hiding them from me and I never had any idea.

“I didn’t want you to worry about me and be more anxious. I needed you to be focused so you didn’t mess up.” He looks up into the sky. “Back then I had a feeling that if you knew how worried I was about you that you would get nervous and then doubt everything you did. I wasn’t ever doubting your capability of getting the book and finding a way to get out of the marriage. I was worried that you would get caught and something bad would happen to you. And I was right with what I was feeling. If I could go back to stop you from finding the book then I would. I never wanted you to get beaten and threatened.”

I take a step back from him, tears lining my eyes.

“You promised that you would never do that.” My voice breaks.

“Sweets.” He takes a step toward me but I hold my hand up, stopping him.

“I know I kept it from you when I was getting hurt because I didn’t want you to feel the pain and get angry, doing something that would put you in harms way,” I whisper. “But I stopped doing it. I thought you weren’t feeling strong emotions and to find out that it is all a lie now… I don’t know how to feel.”

“Adeline,” he says gently.

“I need a second,” I tell him.

“Adeline, are you ready to go back?” Henry asks as he walks into the clearing.

I quickly wipe away the tears from my face and turn away from Kieran.

“We need a couple more minutes,” Kieran says.

“I’ll talk to you later. I’m not giving up on us, but I need a couple of minutes or hours to fully wrap my brain around everything.” I turn to Kieran briefly before looking over at Henry.

Henry looks between us and takes a step back. “I can give you a couple more minutes to talk things through but not many more than that.”