Chapter 12 #2
“You are exhausting, Neve Devlin,” he says, voice low and furious.
“Your defiance is infuriating. Your presence in this castle is a disruption. A pounding headache I cannot escape.” His gaze burns straight through me.
“Bargaining for your service in exchange for your father’s debt was, without question, the worst decision of my long existence. ”
I remind myself I am here to apologize. I reminded myself of that too late. My mouth opens and words tumble out.
“Oh, because it was such a glorious day for me and my father?” I snap.
“Do you know how much I miss him? How worried I am? Do you think I enjoy you screaming at me? Constantly threatening the mines? Turning into a wolf and pouncing on me while some monster crawls beneath the lake?” My voice rises, every word trembling with the weight I’ve carried for weeks.
“I’m infuriating? Please. It is you who has made a sport out of frightening me. You make me miserable on purpose.”
He exhales loudly, dramatically, like he’s bored with the entire conversation. “Then why are you here? Why serve me this foul breakfast? Why apologize at all if I am so cruel?”
“Because I was wrong to go into the library,” I choke out, all the frustration and guilt and aching sadness surging forth in one unstoppable rush. “I didn’t know what it meant to you. I didn’t know it belonged to your wife. That it was all you have left of her.”
His eyes flash. His shoulders lock. A sharp breath expands his chest, but he holds it, frost curling off his skin in thin, furious ribbons.
“I disturbed a place that was sacred to you,” I say softly. “I was careless, and I am sorry.”
His jaw ticks. “Humans… you…”
“Yes!” I cut him off before he can belittle me. “Humans. The creatures you think are lesser. But with all your power, with all your beauty, your immortality, your ancient knowledge, you will never feel in a century what we feel in a single day.” My voice breaks. “I pity you.”
The chair crashes backward as he surges to his feet. The table groans beneath his grip, veins standing out along his corded muscles like lightning beneath translucent skin.
“Pity me?”
“Yes!” My voice matches his fury. I don’t back down. I won’t. “Because for all your years, you will never feel as fiercely or as passionately as we do.”
His lips part. Something raw slips through his expression. “You know nothing of my ferocity,” he mutters, stepping toward me. His gaze pins me in place, steals the breath from my lungs. “You know nothing of my passion.” His hands peel away from the table, trembling. “You know nothing of my loss.”
He turns sharply, pacing to the far end of the room, his hair sweeping behind him.
I swallow hard. My heart thunders. “But I do,” I say quietly. “Loss. I understand it. My mother…”
He whips around. “Is this where you compare my dead wife to your dead mother?” he spits. “Is this where we pretend to find common ground?”
The corner of my mouth twitches, not a smile, not even close. Just a fissure in the pain.
“She isn’t dead,” I whisper. “She’s very much alive.”
He goes utterly still.
His hair falls across half his face, but through the curtain I see his blue eye gleam. “But I thought…”
I shake my head slowly, my throat tightening.
“No. Not dead. Just not with us. Not with my father. Not with me. She lives in a new city now. With her new husband and their three young children.” My voice wavers, but I don’t look away.
“She said my father didn’t make enough money.
That our home was too small. That she had given up everything for us… for me.”
My fingers curl at my sides. “She told me that every time she looked at me, she saw the life she could’ve had. The things she forfeited when she became a mother too young. A wife too young.” A humorless exhale escapes me. “I reminded her of every sacrifice she resented.”
Something darkens in Luceran’s expression. He turns to face me fully now.
“But even knowing that, I couldn’t hate her.
Once, when I was desperate, when I thought I couldn’t bear the loneliness anymore, I went to find her.
I stood on her doorstep with a little bag of clothes and all the hope in the world.
” My breath catches. “And she threw me out. Told me not to come back.”
I look down, swallowing the ache that still lives in me, years later.
“And still… I couldn’t hate her. Because sometimes even when someone hurts you, when they break your heart clean in two, you do everything you can to piece it back together.
” My voice softens. “Even knowing the cracks will always show. Even knowing it will never be whole again. Later, when I was considering moving to the city myself to study, I tried again. I sent her a letter asking if I could stay with her. Just until I found my footing.” I force a tiny, brittle smile.
“She never replied. She left only a few things behind. Her wardrobe. A handful of trinkets. Some jewelry.” My throat works around the ache. “Nothing else.”
Slowly, I lift my gaze back to him. “So I found my happy endings in books instead. I read stories about worlds far from mine, about brave girls and kind heroes and love that didn’t have conditions.
About places where someone always came for you, where you weren’t left behind.
” My eyes sting. “Stories where warmth existed, and magic, and hope.”
Another breath leaves me, shaking.
“I suppose… I suppose that’s why I wanted your library so badly.” My voice dips to a whisper. “It felt like a world I knew. A world that never hurt me.”
Luceran’s expression hardens the moment my voice trails off. Whatever softness had begun to thaw along his features freezes over in an instant. His eyes shutter, going flat and cold as winter stone.
There it is. The wall. The one he drags up whenever anything threatens to touch him.
“Enough,” he mutters.
My heart sinks.
He turns away from me completely, pacing toward the far end of the table as if putting distance between us might erase everything I’ve just said. “Your personal tragedies,” he says with a dismissive flick of his hand, “are irrelevant. They do not concern me.”
The words cut, but I knew they would.
He grips the back of his chair for a moment, shoulders tense, breath shallow.
“You were assigned work,” he growls. “So go do it.”
I swallow, then straighten my spine and nod. Then I turn toward the kitchen door, yet before stepping through it, I force myself to glance back at him.
“And,” I add lightly, “you should know Atilia made your breakfast. I only kept it warm.”
His head lifts a fraction.
“I’ll be sure to pass on your compliments,” I finish.
Before he can answer, before he can snap, or sneer, or silence me, I dip my chin and slip into the kitchen and close the door behind me.