Chapter 26 Maeve
MAEVE
The world seems to slow down as I wait for Sean to continue. He’s sitting there looking at me as if he knows he’s fucked up, and dread is pooling in my stomach like ice water.
"When the Council arranged this marriage," he says again, his voice carefully controlled, "it wasn't just a business arrangement. It was my punishment."
The word hits me again, feeling like a physical blow. "Punishment?"
“I told you I failed the job. Cormac Brennan. They were angry that I didn’t kill him.
That I fired a warning shot and kept him from getting into that car with his wife and child.
As far as they were concerned, I should have accepted the collateral damage.
So they told me they were giving me a chance to prove my loyalty—by marrying you. ”
He won't meet my eyes now, and that somehow makes it worse. “They knew I didn’t want to be married. They knew I wouldn’t want an eighteen-year-old as a wife. And they knew I had no desire to go and manage some rich dead man’s estate. It was a punishment, Maeve, but…”
I shake my head, not wanting to hear this. But I can’t stop it. I’ve wanted the truth from him so many times, and now I’m getting it.
“I didn’t know how you would make me feel. I was angry and resentful at first. I’ve never wanted connections or emotions or… anything like this. They knew that. It was a reminder that I work for them, that I don't get to make my own choices."
Each word is a knife sliding between my ribs. A punishment. I was a punishment. All this time, every moment we've shared, every touch, every kiss—it was all built on the foundation of me being something he was forced to endure.
"That's why you didn't want me," I hear myself say, and my voice sounds distant, disconnected. "That's why you kept pushing me away. Because I was your punishment."
“At first, yes, but…”
“That’s why you wouldn’t touch me on our wedding night. Why you talked about an annulment. You wanted a way out—”
“I wanted a way out for you.”
“For you, too!” I explode. “You can’t tell me that you didn’t want out of this, that you wouldn’t have taken a means to get away from the eighteen-year-old orphan they forced you to marry.”
"It's not like that anymore—"
“They told you this?” I demand. “From the start?”
He closes his eyes. "Yes."
I can feel my heart shattering. It all makes more sense now.
His anger, his coldness, the way he couldn’t stand to look at or touch me.
How horrible our wedding day was, and so many of the days after it.
Every stiff interaction, every cold word—it was all because he was being forced to marry me.
Because I was an obligation. A burden. A punishment for his failures.
"Maeve, please listen to me." He reaches for me, but I pull away, scrambling to the edge of the bed. "That was then. Things are different now. I want you now. What we have is real—"
"Is it?" I laugh, and the sound is bitter even to my own ears. "Or are you just making the best of a bad situation? Deciding that if you're stuck with me anyway, you might as well fuck me?"
"Don't do that." His voice hardens. "Don't reduce what we have to that."
"Then what is it, Sean?" I'm yelling now, all the hurt and humiliation boiling over.
This feels like the last straw, the final betrayal.
"You've spent weeks pushing me away, telling me you're wrong for me, telling me that we could get an annulment once you kill Brennan.
And now, now that you've finally slept with me, you want me to believe it's real?
That I'm not just the punishment you've decided to make the most of? "
“You’re not that any longer.” He swallows hard, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.
“Not since… fuck, Maeve, I don’t know. I don’t know when it changed.
It’s been slow… gradual. I don’t know how to do this, I told you that!
But at some point, you weren’t just that any longer, and I don’t feel that way now. I—”
He shakes his head, his jaw tight. "You're the first person who's ever made me want something more than violence and revenge.
The first person who's made me think I could be something other than what the Council made me.
But I didn't know how to handle that, didn't know how to want you without feeling like I was taking advantage of the situation. "
"So instead you just pushed me away." I scramble out of the bed. "You made me feel unwanted and undesirable and like I was some burden you had to carry. Do you have any idea how that felt? For so long—"
"I was trying to protect you—"
"From what?" I whirl on him. "From yourself? Because you thought you weren't good enough for me? Or were you just trying to protect yourself from having to actually deal with the punishment the Council gave you?"
His lips press together tightly. "That's not fair."
"Fair?" The word comes out as a shriek. "You want to talk to me about fair?
I lost my father. I lost my sister. I lost my brother and found out that he was a monster.
I was forced to marry a stranger who made it very clear he didn't want me.
I was shot at, attacked, and dragged across an ocean to a country where I don't know anyone.
And through all of it, through everything, I tried to make the best of it.
I tried to be understanding, tried to give you space, tried not to be the burden I clearly was—"
"You’re not a burden to me now," he insists, but I'm not listening anymore.
"And then, finally, finally, I thought maybe something was changing between us.
I thought maybe you actually wanted me. That maybe I wasn't just some obligation you were stuck with.
" I'm sobbing now, my hands shaking. "But no.
I was right all along. I was just the thing you were stuck with.
And I was stupid enough to think it could be anything else. "
"Maeve, stop." He grabs my arm, and I yank it away.
"Don't touch me."
"Please, just listen—"
“No.” I back toward the door, unsure of where I’m going, but feeling as if I can’t stay in the room with him for a second longer. "No, I'm done listening. I'm done trying to understand. I'm done making excuses for you."
"Where are you going?" There's panic in his voice now.
"Away from you." I yank open the door, and he springs out of the bed, coming toward me.
"You can't leave. It's not safe—"
"I don't care." And I mean it. In this moment, I don't care about Brennan or threats or safety. I just need to get away from Sean, away from the apartment, away from the suffocating weight of knowing I was never wanted.
Just like everyone else I’ve ever hoped might care for me, might love me, might want me.
No one ever really does, in the end.
"Maeve, please—"
I dodge around him, and he's slowed down by his injuries enough that I make it past. I run through the living room, and I can hear him behind me, calling my name, but I don't stop.
I wrench open the apartment door and run for the stairs, taking them two at a time. My vision is blurred with tears, and I nearly trip twice, but I keep going. I can hear Sean above me, shouting my name, and that just makes me go faster.
I burst out onto the Dublin street, and the frigid February air whips at my face.
I forgot that I was in only my sleepwear—silky shorts and a tank top—or that I was barefoot.
I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know this city at all, I don’t have a phone or money.
But none of that feels like it matters right now. I just run.
I have to get away. I have to be somewhere else.
Behind me, I hear Sean shout my name, closer now, and I push myself harder. I turn down a side street, then another, weaving through the late evening passersby. People stare at me—a crying girl in inappropriate clothing running like her life depends on it—but no one stops me.
My lungs are burning, my legs aching, but I keep running. I can't face him, can't go back to that apartment knowing what I know. I can't look at him without seeing the truth written all over his face, that I was a punishment. An obligation. The burden he was forced to bear.
He didn't want me. He was being forced to have me, and every moment we were together was a reminder of his failure.
And I was so pathetic. So desperate for any scrap of affection or attention.
I was so fucking happy when he was kind to me, so awed by his observations about me being strong enough, good enough at anything.
I was so hungry for him that it makes me feel, now, like I want to sink into the street and die.
The entire time, he was just enduring me.
I finally stop running when I can't hear Sean behind me anymore. I'm in some part of town I don't recognize, on a narrow street lined with closed shops and a few scattered pedestrians. My chest is heaving, my face is wet with tears, and I have no idea what to do now.
The reality of my situation starts to sink in.
I'm alone in a foreign city with no phone, no money, and no way or idea of how to get back to the apartment even if I wanted to.
Which I don't. I never want to go back there.
I never want to see the bed where we made love—no, where we had sex.
Because it wasn't making love, was it? It was him making the best of a bad situation.
Deciding that if he was stuck with me, he might as well use me.
The thought makes me feel physically sick. I stumble to a nearby wall and lean against it, trying to catch my breath, trying to think through the fog of hurt and humiliation.
How could I have been so stupid? All the signs were there. The way he looked at me, how he pushed me away, his talk about getting an annulment.
I'd convinced myself since we got to Dublin that it was about his trauma, his fear of intimacy, his belief that he wasn't good enough for me.
When really, it was so much simpler than that.
He just didn't want me. I was forced on him, and he's spent weeks trying to figure out how to get rid of me without breaking his agreement with the Council.
The thought of him touching me, kissing me, being inside me—now knowing I was nothing but a burden he decided to ease in one way or another—makes my skin crawl. I feel used. Dirty. Ashamed.
I slide down the wall until I'm sitting on the cold pavement, my arms wrapped around my knees. A few people give me curious looks as they pass, but no one stops. I'm just another girl having a breakdown on a Dublin street. Probably happens all the time.
I don't know how long I sit there. I’m shivering, my clothes damp from the evening mist, but I can't bring myself to move.
Where would I even go? I have no friends here, no family.
The only person I know in this entire country is Flynn, and he's Sean's best friend. He probably knew too. He probably knew I was Sean’s punishment and pitied me for being so pathetically grateful for any attention Sean gave me. No wonder he was so nice to me.
The humiliation is overwhelming. I bury my face in my knees and let myself cry, deep sobs that shake my whole body. I've lost everything. My family, my home, my dignity. And for what? To be some criminal's punishment for failing a job?
I'm so lost in my misery that I don't notice the footsteps approaching until it's too late.
A hand clamps over my mouth from behind, and I'm being hauled to my feet before I can even process what's happening. I try to scream through the hand, twisting in the person’s grasp as I try to fight, but another pair of hands grabs my arms, pinning them behind my back.
"Stop struggling," a voice hisses in my ear, and I feel something sharp press against my ribs. A knife, I think with a cold flood of terror. "Or this goes in your gut."
I stop struggling, my body going rigid.
"Good girl," the voice says, and then I'm being dragged backward, away from the streetlight and into the shadows between buildings.
I try to look around to see who's grabbed me, but the hand over my mouth is too tight. I catch a glimpse of a van parked in the alley, its side door already open, and fresh panic surges through me.
This is it. This is how I die, kidnapped off a Dublin street because I was too upset to pay attention to my surroundings, too caught up in my own pain to remember that people want me dead.
Sean was right. It's not safe. But I ran anyway, and now I'm going to pay for it.