Chapter Thirteen #3
His words stopped her short. Because they were true. “Leo—”
“What did she say to you last week? Hm?”
Tem pursed her lips. It was telling that Leo focused on that conversation in particular—as if he knew something significant had happened during it, that there was something Tem couldn’t say. He was so intuitive. It was a quality she usually loved about him, but she hated it right now.
“She just—”
“And don’t you dare lie.”
She sighed. He couldn’t have it both ways.
It wasn’t possible for her to tell him what Evelyn said to her last week and also not lie.
As a Hybreed, she could lie, though it was painful to—to lie to Leo was painful physically and emotionally.
And she knew telling the truth now could sabotage his relationship.
The pause went on too long. Leo leaned in. “What did she fucking say to you, Tem? What did the two of you talk about? Did you talk about me? About us? What secrets did my future wife divulge to you that she doesn’t care to divulge to me?”
Tem didn’t answer. She couldn’t.
“Did she tell you why she left me? Did she read you the fucking letter my father supposedly left her?”
At some point during his tirade, Leo stood up. He was towering over Tem, his hands on either side of her armchair, caging her in.
“What did she say to you?”
“Leo,” Tem cried. “Calm down.”
His reaction was immediate. His expression softened and his shoulders relaxed as he sat back down, his hands clasped loosely in his lap. Tem blinked, floored by the sudden change. Then horrible realization struck.
Tem had just given Leo an order. And as the object of her crest, he was bound to obey it.
“I’m sorry,” Tem said immediately, scrambling for how to fix it. “You…you don’t have to calm down unless you want to.”
A moment of silence passed. Then, lightning-quick, the anger from a moment ago returned. He leaned forward but didn’t stand. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Tem opened her mouth, then closed it—only she knew the details of the crest. Leo had no idea that what she’d done to him on their wedding day had any long-term implications.
“Tem?” Leo insisted. “What the fuck did you just do to me?”
“Leo,” she said as calmly as possible. “Do you remember at the end of our wedding—what you did for me?”
His eyes bored into hers, accusatory and fearful. “Yes. Of course I do.”
“You saved my life,” Tem said slowly. “And I am so grateful.”
“Get to the fucking point, Tem.”
She flinched at this tone but didn’t let it deter her. “When you saved me, it…bonded you to me.”
Leo stared at her expectantly.
Tem groped for the right words. “That bond is significant. And permanent. And it has certain…side effects.”
“Such as?”
“Such as what happened just now. I gave you an order—I told you to calm down, and you did it.”
There was a moment of silence as Tem waited for her words to land. Then:
“But why did I do it? Why did I feel so…?” But Leo trailed off.
Tem couldn’t imagine how it felt for him to receive a command and have to obey it. She’d never been controlled like that before. The fact that she’d just done it to Leo—even inadvertently—made her want to cry. He deserved to know the truth.
“The bond makes it so that you must do as I say.”
Comprehension dawned on him slowly. Leo had saved her life. Now she controlled his. “I’m…beholden to you?”
Tears threatened to fall. “Yes,” she whispered. “Technically, you are, but I would never—”
“Never what?” he snapped. “Give me an order? You just did.”
“No, I mean—yes, I did…but not because I wanted to. I didn’t mean it like that. I just wanted you to—”
“Wanted me to what? To calm down? So you ordered me to do it?”
“I didn’t mean to.”
But Leo just stared at her, his hands clenched into fists. “Your intent is irrelevant,” he said icily.
Tem could only sit there and take it. He was absolutely right; it didn’t matter that she hadn’t meant it. She had done it, and she couldn’t take it back.
“I’m sorry, Leo. It was a mistake. It won’t happen again.”
He only shook his head.
The parallels weren’t lost on Tem. She was saying all the things Caspen had once said to her—that he would try his best not to hurt her, that it wouldn’t happen again, that he would do better next time.
And he never did. And Tem knew she wouldn’t either.
If a time came when she needed to give Leo an order, she would do it.
She knew she would. Her basilisk side would demand it of her, like it demanded so many other things.
It didn’t matter that her human side hated the thought of controlling someone else. The serpent in her longed for more.
Of all the things she was trying to protect Leo from—heartbreak, Evelyn, his father, the villagers, Caspen—she hadn’t considered protecting him from herself.
Tem needed to be better for Leo. She needed to be the person he deserved.
But it wasn’t so simple. She wasn’t so simple.
It was not a matter of will. Tem was resisting the draw of nature, the very thing that brought her to Leo in the first place.
It was impossible to resist such a force, and she was powerless against it.
“This isn’t the first time, is it?” Leo said.
“What do you mean?”
“This isn’t the first order you’ve given me. At our wedding, you told me to go. You told me to find Evelyn.”
Tem bit her lip. Was he going to yell at her for that? “Yes. I did.”
She expected him to stand up again—to explode. Instead he simply stared at her, his brow slightly furrowed, as if he were working out a complicated problem.
“Why did you do that?” he asked quietly.
Why indeed. It was the same question she’d asked herself a hundred times since then. There was really only one answer. “Because I wanted you to be happy. You deserved more.”
Myriad emotions passed over his face. Tem had no idea what he was thinking and didn’t dare ask. Instead she waited for a long moment before saying, “The last thing I wanted was to hurt you, Leo.”
This was received with an incredulous laugh. “And yet, that’s all you do, Tem.”
She opened her mouth to protest but found she didn’t have the words. Then, to her surprise, Leo softened.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
He didn’t say he didn’t mean it—only that he shouldn’t have said it.
Without warning, he leaned forward. Tem tried not to flinch, but by the look on Leo’s face, she must have. He halted, his body still angled toward hers.
“I would do anything you asked, Tem,” he whispered. “Whether I am bound to you or not.”
Tears filled her eyes. Of course she knew that—of course she understood Leo’s love for her and how he expressed it. She always had.
The only sound was the crackling of the fire. Tem wanted to lean forward too, to close the distance between them, but to do so would mean risking the tentative peace they had just found, and nothing could make her do that. Instead she said, “We can’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“Meet like this—alone. We should have…a chaperone or something.”
Leo let out a dull laugh. “A fucking chaperone isn’t going to stop me from wanting you, Tem.”
It wasn’t going to stop Tem from wanting him either.
She had always thought that the pain she felt from letting Leo go was her punishment, that she deserved it.
But now she realized she was not the only one being punished.
Her selfless act had backfired, and Leo was hurting too.
Her attempt to make things right had gone wrong.
She had tried to fix something that wasn’t even broken, and now they were both paying the price.
“Then what do we do?” she whispered. “How do we control this?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think we can.”
“We have to, Leo. We have to.”
“Maybe I don’t want to.”
“That’s not an option.”
He didn’t reply. It was answer enough.
“If we could just talk it through, then maybe we could figure out—”
“I can’t,” he cried. “I can’t just talk to you. Talking is the last fucking thing I want to do with you, Tem.”
Tem bit back tears. She knew he was right; they shouldn’t even be talking as they were now. Technically, nothing had happened yet. But if they continued to do this, it would.
A memory flashed suddenly through Tem’s mind: words scrawled in spiky red ink.
“You could write to me,” she said without thinking.
Leo blinked. “What?”
Tem leaned forward, ignoring the flash of desire in his eyes. “Everything you want to tell me but can’t—you could write it instead.”
He shook his head. “What good will that possibly do?”
“I don’t know. It might help…get it out of your system.”
Leo let out a harsh laugh. Tem knew how he felt because she felt the same: there was no getting each other out of their systems. But they had to do something.
“We have to get through this somehow, Leo,” she pleaded. “For everyone’s sake.”
The problem was so much bigger than the two of them. It wasn’t just their marriages at risk. It was their kingdoms.
Leo turned from her, staring into the fire. “Fine,” he said eventually, his voice tight. “I’ll write to you.”
Dull relief pulsed through her. It was hardly a permanent solution. Or even a rational one. But if Leo could express himself in a way that didn’t harm either of them, perhaps they would be able to muddle through the rest of these dinners without ruining absolutely everything.
Leo dropped his voice. “Will you read them?”
“If you want me to,” she whispered. “Someday. But for now, just…”
“Hide them,” he finished for her.
Tem nodded. It was not lost on her that this entire thing was a terrible idea.
The thought of Leo expressing how he felt in writing and keeping them anywhere in the vicinity of his soon-to-be wife was surely a recipe for disaster.
But there was nothing else to be done. Leo was right; there was nowhere for their feelings to go.
So perhaps they could go into the letters.
“Will you write to me in return?” he whispered.
“Do you want me to?”
Leo turned back to her. His eyes traced down her body, and Tem knew he was picturing every inch of her curves.
In his gaze, she saw everything he couldn’t say and everything he would no doubt write in the letters.
She saw how badly he wanted her—how much it was killing him to refrain from touching her—how he was mere seconds away from sweeping her into his arms. She saw his pain.
So it didn’t surprise her when he answered, “No.”
Should she be offended? Relieved?
Perhaps it was for the best that he didn’t want her to write.
Surely, he already knew how she felt. And while keeping love letters around was risky for Leo, it was downright dangerous for Tem.
There could be no evidence of her love for Leo—no physical confirmation of their bond.
Basilisks were not free with their hearts. No one could read those letters.
Especially not Caspen.