Chapter Forty-One #3
“You look beautiful, Tem,” he whispered. He shouldn’t be saying that. He shouldn’t be telling a woman who wasn’t his bride that she looked beautiful. But he was.
“So do you,” Tem whispered back.
Leo tilted his head. “Is that so?”
“Yes. Boys can be pretty too.”
He smiled. Did he remember when she’d said that to him the first time they’d slept together? Did he know that she still meant it? Tem had to break the moment.
“How are you feeling?”
To her surprise, Leo laughed. “How am I feeling?”
“I don’t know what else to ask.”
Leo crossed to the fire. “I don’t know how to answer.”
Tem joined him, and they stared at the flames together.
“I feel sad,” he whispered.
Tem turned to him. His gray eyes were shining. “Why would you say that?”
Leo stepped closer. “Because I can’t breathe when I look at you. Because it hurts”—he pressed his hands to his chest—“right here.”
Tem’s chest felt the same. It had felt that way ever since he’d walked off the stage at their wedding. Nothing had felt good since then. Nothing had felt right. There were too many memories here—too many reminders of what she and Leo had been through. Too many things that were no longer hers.
Leo was still talking:
“I think about you all the time, Tem. I can’t fucking stop. Nothing distracts me—nothing draws my focus. You’re always there, in the back of my mind, watching me.”
“I’m not watching—”
“I know you feel it too. I know what you did at our wedding did something to us.”
Tem stared up at him.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” He stepped even closer. She didn’t step away. “Something changed. We’re different than we were. It’s not just that you can give me orders. It’s something else—something permanent. Your basilisk magic bound us together, didn’t it?”
Tem didn’t trust herself to speak. She could only nod.
“I fucking knew it,” Leo hissed.
The same scent from earlier washed over her. An earthiness she couldn’t place.
“What is it, Tem? What did you do to us?”
That question was too vast to answer. What had Tem done to them?
She’d ruined them. She’d made it so that Leo’s life was at stake—so he was trapped with a woman who didn’t love him the way Tem did.
The conditions of the crest were clear: it would bind the recipient to her.
Tem should have guessed that there would be some caveat, some horrible catch.
Nothing with the basilisks was simple—certainly not their magic.
There were always complications. Always a cost.
She had tried to do the right thing. And she had failed. “I’m so sorry, Leo.”
He closed his eyes as if to block her out. “I don’t need an apology.”
“Then what do you need?” She shouldn’t have asked. Because she already knew the answer.
“You.”
The strands of Tem’s morality had been fraying for a long time. They were breaking now.
Leo’s body called to her. She saw his pulse beating in his neck—the way his fingers flexed around his whiskey glass, accentuating his veins.
She had resisted him too long. Tem had thought she could come up with a solution to their problem, that if she bought them enough time, she could solve it.
But now, standing here with the object of her crest, she knew she had reached her limit.
Leo opened his eyes. “Tell me not to marry her.”
Time stopped as they stared at each other.
Tem wanted nothing more than to tell him not to marry Evelyn. But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. If she told Leo not to marry Evelyn, the crest would force him to obey. Tem was done making choices for Leo—done trying to dictate his future. The more she did it, the more pain she caused.
Tem shook her head. “It’s your choice to marry her, Leo. I gave you two orders, remember?”
She remembered, even if Leo didn’t. She remembered the two commands she’d given him on the stage at their wedding: I want you to find Evelyn. I want you to choose your future.
“I told you to find her,” Tem whispered. “Anything beyond that was your choice.”
Leo only shook his head. “You sent me away, Tem. Bring me back now. Bring me back to you.”
Tears were forming. She couldn’t stop them. “I can’t make your choices for you anymore, Leo. I just can’t.”
“Then tell me something else, anything, that will make it easier to choose.”
There was only one thing Tem could tell him. The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them: “Your father paid Evelyn to leave you.”
Leo froze, his whiskey halfway to his mouth. For a long moment, he simply stood there. Then he whispered, “What?”
“I can’t tell you not to marry her,” Tem said. “But I can tell you that Maximus offered her money, and she took it. It’s why she left in the first place, and it’s why she stayed away.”
Leo stood motionless, stunned into silence.
Tem didn’t dare break it.
It pained her to see Leo hurting. She had just confirmed the very thing he knew in his heart but didn’t want to believe. Tem’s heart broke for him. To know that his partner had left him for money was a horrible, awful truth. She wanted to fix it—to patch the wound and stop the bleeding.
“At least she came back,” Tem whispered.
“She didn’t.”
“Of course she did.”
Leo looked at her, his eyes finally focusing. “She didn’t come back for me, Tem. She came back for this.” He threw his arms wide, encapsulating the room.
Tem understood what he meant—that Evelyn had only returned when it was clear she was returning to the newly crowned king. Little did she know the state of the kingdom and the status of the bloodletting. No one could have predicted that.
“She wants the bloodletting to continue. It’s all she cares about.”
Tem opened her mouth, but Leo wasn’t done.
“I knew.” He shook his head. “I knew a long time ago—when I saw how she acted after I told her I freed the basilisks.”
“How did she act?”
Leo rolled his shoulders. “She said she couldn’t understand why I freed them. She said that the snakes deserved to bleed.”
Disbelief passed through Tem, followed closely by rage.
Before she could respond, Leo went on. “She said you deserved it too.”
He said it quietly, as if he didn’t want her to hear it. But Tem would never forget it as long as she lived.
“Leo.” Tem placed a hand on his arm, careful not to touch his skin. “Can’t you just talk to her about it?”
He let out a harsh laugh. “I’m done fucking talking to her.” His eyes slid to hers. “And to you.”
Tem froze at his tone. She knew he was angry at Evelyn.
But by extension, he was also angry at her.
It was Tem’s fault Evelyn was here in the first place—Tem’s fault they had reunited.
It didn’t matter that she’d tried to do the right thing.
It didn’t matter that this wasn’t how she thought things would turn out. Intent was irrelevant.
Leo was still breathing hard. His next word was said with gritted teeth: “Leave.”
“What?”
“Leave, Tem,” he said. “Go back to the caves.”
“But why? What are you going to do?”
“I am going to make my choice.”
Then he was gone.