13 Imogen #3
“You read the letter, didn’t you?” he asked in a broken whisper.
“I told you that I would do terrible things to keep you and my people safe. The agreement to give Halla a child was the worst of them. There was nothing else she wanted, nothing I could bargain with. So I granted her request to prevent an imminent war, knowing full well that I would either delay my end of the agreement indefinitely or be unable to fulfill it and eventually pay for my lie.”
I let his words settle between the creaking of the ship and the slush of the waves. His choice had been selfish and dangerous and mindlessly romantic. He’d risked the trust of both Obelia and his council for something we could never have. For hope.
“I understand now,” I said, carefully. My heart crushed. “But Theodore, I severed our bond. I ended this because it never should have begun in the first place. My anger and hurt over us is misplaced.” My voice was entirely hollow. “I have no claim on you.”
“No claim…” The ship hit another series of steep waves, and it sent us rolling over the net, sliding nearer.
“After everything, you have no claim on me?” His rancor seemed to burn away the mist. “I still feel you. Not your blood, not our bond, but something more… beguiling. More devastating. I don’t know what Godsdamned spell you cast, or how, but you left a mark on every part of me.
” Something depthless tightened his eyes.
“You are a spirit I cannot banish. A ghost that wails the word mine as you haunt me.” His hurt carved through me, straight to my bones.
“If you never wish to return to me, then be merciful, and tell me now.”
I closed my eyes. “That’s not fair.”
His brows lowered into a resolute line. “Imogen,” he said, disregarding what was and was not fair. “Tell me if you still want me.”
My chest squeezed so tightly I thought it would crack. “Damn you—want has nothing to do with it.”
He gave a vitriolic laugh. “At this point, it has everything to do with it.”
I shook my head again, terrified that my resolve would melt in the face of this sort of logic. “But it shouldn’t. It was one night. What we shared was… it was…”
His hard look was gone now, replaced with a soft, heated challenge. He took the knot around my wrist and pulled me toward him, putting us near enough for me to feel the flutter of his angry breaths. “It was what?”
Our gazes held, and I was suddenly certain that what had grown and knotted between us was not something that could be gently unwoven. It would need to be sliced.
“It wasn’t wise.” I said it unkindly, my voice harsh.
That damned smirk began to tip his mouth. “Agreed. A good thing I didn’t do it for the wisdom.”
My temper slipped. “I know hardly anything about you,” I snapped.
“Not your likes or dislikes. I do not know if you play an instrument! Or when your bloody birthday is. The risk you are suggesting we take is idiotic and in time this… pain… and anger… and our feelings for one another…” I stopped, trying to slow my thundering heart. “It will all fade.”
He let go of the rope around my wrists. The challenge in his look waned until it was heartbreakingly blank. A gentle breeze fluttered the dark hairs hanging over his brow as an awful lull pressed in around us.
He looked away, staring out into the mist. “I’m a fair pluck on the lute.” He swallowed hard. “The trouble is that it’s my least favorite of the instruments, so it brings me little joy to play it.”
I almost told him to stop, to untie me and let me leave, but I felt suddenly desperate to know what he would say next.
“Back home, in my desk, there’s a blue sketchbook I’ve had for over a decade.
Twice a year or so, I get the impulse to sketch.
The book is full of uninspired and poorly done drawings…
a wineglass, some fruit. They’re embarrassing, really.
” His gaze danced across my face and his lips slanted into a deprecating smile. “But I am nothing if not persistent.”
I didn’t know what to say. I offered him a fond look in return. “You are that.”
He swiped a hand down his face. “I’ll be twenty-eight next month. On the twentieth.”
Slowly, he eased himself forward until his folded legs touched mine and reached once more for the rope at my wrists.
He didn’t look at me as he spoke; he kept his voice tragically soft.
“Here is what I know about you.” He started undoing the knot.
I tried to jerk my hands away, terrified to lose the protection, but he firmed his hold on me.
He unwound it even slower than he’d tied it, passing his thumbs sweetly over my skin as he went.
I felt that small touch everywhere. “You think that I’ve missed something.
That I cannot possibly love you when you are made up of unknown dangers and lurking threats.
But I don’t see you the way you see yourself.
Looking at you is like looking at the turquoise sea on a clear day.
I can see through it in places. It’s full of beauty and shadows, and though I cannot know the whole of what it contains, I would happily spend my life trying. ”
The rope sat coiled in our laps and Theodore held my hands in his.
I blinked too quickly, trying to keep back tears.
He went on, tracing the shape of my knuckles with his fingertip.
“I don’t know how to do this without razing everything my grandfather and father and I built to the ground.
I don’t know if you even truly want me.” He looked into my eyes and I could not stop myself from leaning in.
“But you must know that I see all the parts you hate and wish to hide, and I love you still.”
He’d made me feel like gossamer and light. Divine. I could do nothing but nod.
Lachlan’s voice called through the fog, close and loud. “Imogen, Gods damn it.” His footsteps pounded on the upper deck, just above us. “Imogen.”
Theodore set my hands in my lap. He waited for Lachlan to leave before he stood, using the bowsprit above him for balance, and started toward the rail of the upper deck. “Magic almost killed you, Immy,” he whispered, looking down at me with beseeching eyes.
I knew how he hated it. He’d begged me to never use it. “It saved me, Theo.”
He shook his head. “No. I did.” I saw everything in his face then—fury, heat, longing, fear. “And Gods damn you, I’ll do it again and again if I must.”
Then he climbed up to the upper deck, over the rail, and was lost to the mist.