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“That isn’t the same thing.”
“To the people who would bury you, it is.”
I looked out the window, refusing to let him see how close he had come to something I couldn’t defend. Rain blurred the sidewalks until every stranger became a shadow with somewhere to go.
Mine had ended in pieces. Salvatore died. Henry became Illyria’s son because keeping him meant disappearing. Every truth afterward took another piece of the life I had mistaken for mine.
“I’m not afraid of dying,” I admitted. “I’ve spent four years knowing the worst thing that could happen already did.”
Rurik went still. “That is not true.”
“You didn’t lose what I lost.”
“No.” His voice roughened. “I am trying to prevent it.”
I turned toward him. “Prevent what?”
He didn’t answer.
The silence carried everything he refused to say. I had recognized his love inside the safe house, but private knowledge had let us pretend it required nothing. Now it sat between us with nowhere left to hide.
“You’re not asking me to stop because of what happened to Salvatore,” I said. “You’re asking because of what might happen to me.”
“They are the same danger.”
“They aren’t the same reason.”
Rurik’s jaw tightened. “Does the reason matter if it keeps you alive?”
“It matters if you expect me to live for you.”
His gaze shifted toward the window. “I have never asked you to do that.”
“You’re asking now.”
“I am asking you to live for yourself.”
“I don’t know how.” The confession slipped out before pride could stop it. “I knew how to be Salvatore’s wife. I knew how to be Henry’s mother, even when motherhood meant watching him belong to someone else. I don’t know who I am when I can’t have either of them.”
“You are still Madigan.”
“That has never felt like enough.”
“It is enough to me.”
The quiet words changed the air. Rurik looked away too late; the truth had already crossed the space between us.
“Rurik—”
“Do not.” He kept his attention upon the passing street. “Do not explain what you cannot give me. I have not asked for it.”
“You don’t have to ask.” I tightened my fingers around the authorization. “I know.”
His gaze returned to mine. “Knowing does not create an obligation.”
“But it changes this.” I gestured between us. “Every time you ask me to stop, every time you tell me my life matters more than the truth, I hear what you’re really asking.”
“What am I asking?”
