Page 408 of Reign

“I wasn’t scared you would hurt me.”

“Then why were you looking at me like you didn’t know who I was?”

“I was looking at you because I finally did.”

Something inside me goes completely still.

“Elena,” I breathe out.

“I saw the part you hide from me.”

“You never should have seen it.”

Her expression changes. “That isn’t your decision.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No.” Her spine straightens. “There you go again doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Deciding what I’m allowed to see. What I’m allowed to know. What I can survive. Then calling it protection.”

“It is protection.”

“It was protection when you took the gun away from him. It was protection when you stopped him from taking me.” Her fingers tighten around my shirt. “Hiding yourself from me isn’t.”

“I’m not hiding.”

“You absolutely are.”

She gestures toward the room, the house, everything beyond it.

“You answer questions without giving me answers. You turn people and places into vague little nouns because you think using someone’s name might corrupt me. You act as if hearing about your life will take something from me.”

“Violence takes things from people.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, Luciano. I do.”

Her voice cracks through the room.

“Felipe took something from me today. He put a gun against me, grabbed me, and made me realize none of the lessons my brothers gave me mattered because I had nothing to fight him with.”

My jaw tightens.

“But you didn’t take anything from me.”

“You don’t know that yet. You were in shock. Your body is still full of adrenaline.”

“I know enough.”

I say nothing.

She looks down at her hands. “It should have made me want to run.”