Chapter 36 #2
He shook his head. "I am poison, Ophelia. You are already sick. I will not make it worse."
He turned and walked back to his chair by the window. He sat down, pouring another glass of brandy, his back to me.
I lay there in the dark, crying silently, watching the rigid line of his shoulders. I fell asleep eventually, and just as I drifted off, I felt it.
A touch.
Light as a moth's wing. A brush against my cheek, wiping away a tear. It carried the scent of petrichor and pomegranate.
I didn't open my eyes. I didn't want to know if it was real, or if it was just my desperate heart conjuring the ghost of the male I was desperately starting to cling to.
The ninth day since Cain brought me home.
The word felt heavy in my mind. Home. Not prison. Not fortress. Home.
The storm outside matched the one inside the room. Thunder rattled the windowpanes, flashing stark white light across Cain’s face.
It had been nine days. Nine days of him watching me. Nine days of him drinking until his eyes were glazed and his aura was a chaotic mess of spikes and blades. Nine days of him treating me like a porcelain doll that was already cracked—precious, but too dangerous to handle.
I couldn't take it anymore.
The silence was louder than the thunder. It was suffocating me. I needed him. I didn't need the Prince of Death. I didn't need the protector. I needed Cain.
"Come here," I said.
My voice was stronger today. The bruises on my face had faded to a sickly yellow, thanks to the salves Silas provided, but the hollow ache in my chest was growing.
Cain didn't turn from the window. "Go to sleep, Ophelia."
"No," I said, sitting up. "I am tired of sleeping. I am tired of you sitting in that chair like a gargoyle. If you are going to sleep in the same room every night, might as well sleep on the bed. It’s big enough for both of us."
He turned then. Slowly. The lightning illuminated his face, and I gasped.
He looked wrecked. There were dark circles under his eyes, and a stubble of beard shadowed his jaw. But it was his eyes... they were wild. Tormented.
"The bed?" he repeated, a dark, humourless laugh escaping him. He stood up, swaying slightly. "You want me in your bed?"
“Technically, it’s your bed, and I want you near me," I clarified, clutching the duvet. "I want you to hold me. Like you did in the carriage. Like you did in the bath. Like you do every time you think I am asleep.”
“I do not. The carriage was necessity," he snarled, walking toward the bed. He stopped at the foot of it, gripping the wooden post until I heard the wood groan. "The bath was about survival. This? This is madness."
"Why?" I demanded, anger flaring to mask the hurt. "Why is it madness? I am your wife!"
"You are a victim!" he roared.
The sound silenced the thunder.
He breathed heavily, his chest heaving. "You are a victim of males like me. Males who take. Males who break things."
He leaned forward, his eyes burning into mine.
"Do you know what it takes for me to sit in that chair?" he hissed. "Do you know how hard it is to hear you breathing and not cross this room? Every instinct I have tells me to claim you. To wrap myself around you so tight that the world forgets you exist."
He looked at his hands, disgusted.
"But I look at you... and I see the bruises. I see the fear in your eyes when I move too fast. And I realise..." His voice broke. "I realise that I am just another version of Malathor. Just maybe with better manners."
"No," I whispered, shaking my head. "You are nothing like him. You saved me."
"I failed you!" he shouted, striking his chest. "I let him take you! And now... now you look at me like I'm your saviour, but I am the reason you were in that cell, Ophelia! My enemies. My world. My darkness."
He grabbed the bottle of brandy from the table and hurled it into the fireplace. It shattered, the alcohol flaring up in a burst of blue flame.
"I will not touch you," he said, his voice dropping to a terrifying, quiet resolve. "I will not taint you further."
"So you will just destroy yourself instead?" I asked, tears streaming down my face. "You will drink yourself into oblivion? You will rot in that chair while I lay here alone? I can feel your Void, Cain. It’s disintegrating. You need me.“
He looked at me, and the pain in his expression was so raw it felt like he had physically struck me.
"Yes," he said.
He walked to the door, his hand hovering over the handle. He didn't look back.
"I would carve out my own heart and feed it to the Void before I let it use my hands to hurt you ever again," he said, his voice trembling. "I am the match, Ophelia. And you are dry tinder. If I get too close... you don't get warm. You burn."
"I don't care if I burn!" I screamed at his back. "I would rather burn with you than freeze alone!"
He paused. For a second, I thought he would turn. I thought he would come back and consume me like the fire he claimed to be.
But he didn't.
"Then you are a fool," he whispered.
He opened the door and walked out, the click of the latch sounding like a judge’s gavel in the silent room.
I didn't scream. I didn't throw anything at the closed door.
I sat there, the tears cooling rapidly on my cheeks, turning into icy tracks.
A fool.
The word echoed in the empty room, bouncing off the velvet and the stone. He had rejected me. I had stripped myself bare, offered him the only thing I had left—my comfort, my presence—and he had looked at it, deemed it too dangerous, and walked away.
He thought he was being noble. He thought he was saving me from the fire.
But as the shock faded, a cold, familiar heat replaced it.
He wasn't saving me. He was controlling me. AGAIN.
Just like my mother. Just like Malathor. Cain was deciding what I could handle. He was deciding where the lines were drawn. He was looking at me and seeing glass that needed to be put back in a cabinet, not a female who had just survived hell and was just asking to be held. For comfort.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand, the motion aggressive, rough against my healing skin.
"Fine," I whispered to the empty air.
If he wanted to be the monster in the tower, brooding and untouchable, then let him. If he wanted to build a wall of ice between us to 'protect' me, he would find that I was very good at climbing. Or demolishing.
I felt the familiar steel spine of the Aenite survival instinct snap back into place. The vulnerability I had felt for the last nine days—the hazy, drug-like need for his approval—evaporated.
He wanted a war? He wanted to push me away?
I would make him regret every inch of distance he put between us.
I collapsed back onto the pillows, pulling Poppy against my chest. My golden fox, sleepy, sensing the shift in my mood, her little nose twitching.
For the first time in ten days, I didn't pray for safety.
I prayed for this feeling—this pathetic, needy ache in my chest—to go away. I prayed for my skin to harden into his bloody armour.
I stared at the door he had walked through, my eyes narrowing.
My husband was back on my shit list.