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“What if it’s not that simple, though?” she said. “Everyone who wins says they were good, but they’re the ones who tell the story. They get to choose how we’ll remember it. What if it’s never that simple?”
“I was commanded to marry her, so I married her. I was never commanded to care.”
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He wasn’t even looking at his wife anymore. His gaze passed over Aurelia’s head, staring at a mirror that reflected himself and Helena.
face, as if she was caught off guard by the weight of his attention.
“Besides, if I didn’t leave you on the floor retching, you might make the mistake of thinking I care.” Helena inclined her head. “Yes. You seem strangely concerned about me thinking such a thing.” Ferron froze for an instant,
The guilds, for all their talk of progress and equality, and freedom from rigid traditionalism, had very specific ideas about precisely who deserved that equality and freedom.
“Well, you—you have a natural talent for it. In another life, you could be a healer.” “One of life’s great ironies,” he said, glancing towards the door, his jaw tight.
Her nails had carved crescents into her palms.
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It was beautiful, and it felt like a betrayal. The world was not supposed to be beautiful any longer. It was supposed to be dead and cold, forever mirroring the misery of Helena’s life.
“Oh, Marino.” His thumb trailed along her neck, following the scar below her jaw. “If I’d known what pain you’d cause me, I never would have taken you.”
The moment their lips touched, he crushed her body against his. The hand on her throat slid into her hair, tangling in the curls, gripping them tight as the kiss deepened, angling her head back so that he could consume her. He kept kissing her, hard enough to hurt but not bleed, like a storm poured down her throat.
His face was buried against her throat, lips pressed below her ear, kissing down the length of her neck to the juncture of her shoulder, nipping, and he reached a spot, and she—moaned. The sound shattered the quiet. They both froze.
Instead, she’d melted at the warmth of being held.
Sitting sometimes for hours with her hand in his as if it could keep her from slipping away.
Every number but the last too large.
She should have felt something at this news, but she was empty. “Whether you win a battle or lose it, all I see is the cost.”
Whatever passing interest prompted this, I want you to turn it into an obsession that consumes him.”
Get closer, Ferron. Become so obsessed with finding my vulnerabilities that you don’t notice the ones I’m making in you.
Heroism is something for others to perform for the masses.
She only needed him to realise he wanted to tell someone— —that he wanted to tell her.
She’d been so terrified he would betray them that she’d never stopped to consider what would happen if he didn’t.
And he’d thought she’d known. The thought gutted her. That he’d thought she knew and had abandoned him to this.
Helena met his stare. She could fix this. She wasn’t going to let him suffer and die for finally doing something good in his life.
She couldn’t fix herself anymore, and no one else seemed inclined to even notice she was breaking.
She backed into the wall. “I’m not sure—” “Stay,” he said softly, and his head dipped so close she felt his breath in her hair. “You know, there’s something about you, Marino, that inspires the most terrible decisions from me. I’ll know better, but then I’ll still…”
“I must admit,” he said in a low voice as though making a confession, “if anyone had told me you’d become so lovely, I would never have come near you. I was rather blindsided when I saw you again.”
He wasn’t looking at her hair anymore; his eyes were on her face, on her lips, that silver gleam lighting them again as he shifted closer. “If you don’t want me to kiss you, you should say so now,” he said.
He looked at her like he saw her. And he was asking. She kissed him. A real kiss this time. The instant her lips met his, he took control. As if she’d sprung something loose in him, his arm was around her waist, drawing her towards him, pulling her close until their bodies pressed together, and she was on his lap.
as if he were starved of touch.
She hadn’t realised how much she’d wanted to be touched. That she was starved of it, too.
Now awakened, it seemed to claw out from under her skin, a need that she’d only ever known as an absence.
“Why do you think I was kissing you?” he finally asked in a tight voice. “Because I’m here.”
Kaine had handed himself to her on a platter, gone above and beyond what Crowther and Ilva had ever hoped, and Helena had sabotaged herself because it wasn’t real and she’d wished it was.
Women were always defined by the lowliest thing they could be called.
things to while away
.
“You don’t get to lie to me and then get angry when I make the mistake of believing you,”
That none of it had ever meant anything. That the miracles he believed in were mere sleights of hand, bought and paid for with betrayal. She couldn’t.
“There was no time to train you for the assignment. We thought it best to let the deal run its course and—collect the pieces afterwards. It made you more convincing.”
It was like being punched to have his full attention again.
“I envied your naïveté, how you credited me with goodness and failed to realise that it was a setup from the very beginning. When you begged for a chance to heal me, I gave in. When you touched me, I didn’t push you away. I thought, Where’s the harm? It all ends soon enough, and life has been cold for such a long time.” She didn’t realise she’d started crying until his thumb brushed across her cheek. “By the time I realised I’d miscalculated, you’d already forced your way in.
He gave a low bitter laugh. “I’m sure there’s something poetic in it all, but right now all I feel is a new set of manacles.”
She was sick of how Ilva and Crowther both defaulted to manipulation to get their “miracles” to show up. As if people couldn’t be counted on unless they were tricked.
This concern, this obsession with her preservation, wasn’t about her at all. It was about his mother, Enid Ferron, and his failure to save her. To him, Helena was an opportunity to try to get it right. A consolation prize he didn’t even want but couldn’t bring himself to give up on.
“She’s dead,” he said. “You are not. My loyalty was to those least responsible for her suffering, but if the Eternal Flame has decided that you are an affordable casualty, I will not be noble or understanding. I can exact dual revenge. I will make them pay if they get you killed.” She stared at him, startled. She hadn’t accounted for this. She knew Kaine wasn’t a spy because of any ideological reasoning; it was purely a sense of personal interest. He hated the Holdfasts and the Eternal Flame but he hated Morrough and the Undying more. That fact was immutable. The source of all his motivation.
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“You are not replaceable,” he said, his hands trembling against her shoulders. “You are not required to make your death convenient. You are allowed to be important to people. The reason I’m here—the reason I’m doing any of this—is to keep you alive. To keep you safe. That was the deal.” He searched her face. “They didn’t tell you.” She shook her head, giving a broken sob and—before she let herself think—she kissed him.
“I know,” he said, but he didn’t leave, lingering until she looked up. His eyes shone in the dark, as if there were moonlight underground. He touched her cheek, tilting her face up and kissing her. “Use the ring, call me, if you ever need anything.”
“I don’t want to always be alone,” she said. It was easier to be honest in the dark.
He didn’t let go. “Helena…” She stilled at her name. “I’m alone, too,” he said.
“This—is the way I wanted it to be,” she admitted. “With you. I wanted it to be like this with you.” He went very still. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry it wasn’t,” he finally said, pulling her closer. Had he ever actually been like this? She wondered sometimes how much of her drunken memory of kissing him was real. Or if she’d invented all the intimacy to replay when her life felt too void of any tenderness.
When he started to move, he pressed his forehead against hers, their breath intermingling. When he kissed her, it felt like the beginning of something that could be eternal.
