“Wow, you guys really are arrogant,” I snapped. To think that just because they got married, their wife would never, ever deign to even want to be with anyone else was ridiculous. I’d never cheated on anyone and never planned to, but it irked me that Wylfrael was so sure in his claim, like any woman married to a stone sky god was spellbound by him, with no more mind of her own.
“It is not arrogance to speak the truth.”
“The truth,” I scoffed. “You didn’t tell me this little bit of the truth before. That I’d have no one for the rest of my life.”
“You won’t have no one,” he snarled in return. “You’ll have me.”
His words rang like a gong in my head.
“I’ll have you,” I echoed dully. “Ah, yes. My fake husband. No real life with him. No children.”
“You want children?” He sounded startled.
“Yes! You would know that if you’d asked,” I said. Being single back home, it wasn’t exactly something on my near horizon, but it was always something I’d wanted eventually. I was twenty-nine now, and I’d started thinking about the subject more and more with the approach of my thirtieth birthday.
“Well,” he said, a new gruffness catching in his throat, “I’ll get you a pet.”
“A pet!” I exclaimed, my eyes wide, my mouth opening in offended shock. As if a pet would replace an entire future with a man I loved. A family of my own.
“Yes. A pet. And, like I said, you won’t have no one, you’ll have me. I cannot make you pregnant, but if you should require anything else, I will provide it as your husband.”
“Anything else?” I seethed, having a feeling I knew where he was going with this and just daring him to say it.
“If you should ever require... companionship. Relations, as you call it, I will be the one to provide it to you.”
Provide it to me. As if it was some service I needed, like an oil change, instead of a real connection with someone.
“You’re saying if I want to fuck someone, it has to be you, then? For the rest of my life?” I asked, my voice rising higher and higher with every word until it reached a pitchy, furious warble.
“Yes,” he snapped. “It goes both ways, you know. I will take no other lovers, either.”
“Oh, poor you,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. It felt hot in the tube now, but I couldn’t tell if it was from his body heat or my anger. “You’ve had hundreds of years to fuck your way across the universe and now you’re stuck with only me.”
Oh, no. No, no, no. Was that jealousy?
“I can’t keep talking about this,” I said, tossing my hands in the air. I stormed out of the beautiful starfinder and didn’t stop until I’d reached one of the spread-out petals of this room’s walls, perpendicular to the ground far below. Too furious to be afraid, I kept walking until I neared the pointed edge.
I didn’t need to turn around to know that Wylfrael had followed me out. I felt his presence, even though the cold night air sucked away the warmth of him that had cradled me. He loomed behind me, a shadow I couldn’t shake.
“What?” I called brittlely without turning back to him. “Come out here to tell me what to do again? To tell me to be careful?”
“No,” he said softly. “Even if you slipped, even if you jumped, you’d never hit the ground.”
I finally did turn around to look at him. His wings flared open behind him, a silent, starry promise of protection and possession all wrapped up in one.
I’ll never be truly free.
Even if separated, even if he spent all his time doing whatever it was that the council needed him for, I’d never be free. Not really. I’d always be bound up in this, in him. The invisible, tightening layers of our agreement that had once felt like salvation and now just felt like ruin.
All my fury faded, crushed under sadness that made me double over, like someone had punched me in the solar plexus. My hands landed on my knees then disappeared, turning murky, and I realized it was because of tears in my eyes.
I couldn’t even be mad that I was crying in front of him yet again. In fact, a harsh, hurting part of me was glad for it. Good. Maybe he’ll run away again and leave me the hell alone.
But he didn’t. He was at my side instantly. He said nothing, and neither did I, as he scooped me up into his arms and carried me back towards the stairs. I could have fought him. I could have screamed.
I turned my face against his starlit chest – so warm, so fucking warm – and sobbed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN Wylfrael
Torrance was weeping. I couldn’t run from it this time. Not when the salt-scented tempest of it was directed squarely at my chest. She shuddered in my arms, even when we re-entered the warm shelter of the castle, having closed up the walls of the conservatory. Her face was exquisitely soft and alarmingly wet against my chest as I carried her down the stairs.
Was all human weeping this distressing, or only Torrance’s? I was not sure what was a more disagreeable possibility. That I would be affected thus by any human woman weeping. Or that my bride’s crying was special, and affected me above that of any other.
Because affect me, it did. Every tremor, every gasp she made, was like a shockwave through my frame. I wanted to make it stop.
I wanted to comfort her, my prisoner, my bride, but I did not know how.
She wants children. Children!
The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind, and now I felt a fool. I’d already resigned myself, with desperate agony, to the fact that I’d never meet my mate, never father a son. But now, I was forcing that fate on her, too.
I’m not forcing it, I reminded myself harshly. Her friends had left her. The only way she’d find them with any sort of efficiency is if I got access to the council. Being married suited both our purposes. We both had to make sacrifices.
I’ll have no one. That’s what she’d said. And, like some haunted half-wit, I’d babbled that she wouldn’t have no one. I’d gone far beyond any realm of decency or sense and told her I’d be there for her, that I would lie with her, even though that was something I knew I should never, ever do. I said I’d get her a blasted pet! Like that would mean anything to her now. I’d even said I’d house her human friends here, the very same ones I’d almost murdered in my rage. If I’d been at my full power, I knew with a deadly certainty I would have killed them all.
I’ll have no one.
I thought about her loving a Sionnachan male and rebelled. The same way I’d rebelled against the thought of Maerwynne marrying her.
That was not her fate. I was her fate.
What do I want with her?
The question was so loud in my head it was almost like Torrance had asked it herself – What do you want with me?
I carried her into my room – our room – and then I did not know what to do with her. I held her, turning my head this way and that, looking for something, anything, to make her stop crying. It was as if her grief was pouring out of her in physical waves, like I was the shore and she a battering ocean storm. I reeled with the sense that she’d drag away every bit of me, erode me down to my very bones, if I let her.