The Shadows Between Us

by Tricia Levenseller

Not beautiful enough to tempt him, am I? We’ll see about that. I’m going to make him fall so in love with me, he’ll forget he ever saw another woman. He will be begging for me by the time I’m done with him. And then he’ll beg for his life right before I end him.

Oh!?

But could that have been just a smidgeon of jealousy in his tone?

Mwahahaha

“Save the act,” Myron says, unmoved. “I’ve known you too long to know when you’re faking.” “I guarantee you never could tell when I was faking.”

THE GASP I JUST GUSPED

The poets can say whatever they damned like. A woman’s worth is not decided by what’s between her legs but by what is in her mind.

The man is completely delusional.

Real

I HATE NOT HAVING the last word in a conversation. Absolutely loathe it.

Real shit

But now he’s on display, and I decide it’s his best look.

“I lied. You’re the most stunning thing to ever set foot in my palace.”

I shouldn’t be surprised at all that a king would be selfish, demanding, even cruel at times. But he is other things as well. He is intelligent, handsome, and giving. And he is not entirely unchangeable. He is changing his ways already for me.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily about finding the perfect man but finding the perfect man for you.

No one but me is allowed to decide when Kallias Maheras, king of six realms and counting, is going to die.

I am shocked by the sudden realization that I would rather have this life. This life of Kallias’s trust and friendship, of helping him to rule a kingdom without having any real power, just a king’s ear—I would rather have all of that than another fling with a man who will just give me jewels because he likes the things I do to him in bed.

But I still won’t be able to touch him. I won’t have him. Which is more important? I know the answer to that. Obviously the power. But then—why do I feel so miserable inside?

Fifteen, her eyes say. As if I could ever forget.

“I want a life with you, Alessandra, one without the shadows between us.

AHHHHHH

Perhaps that is what he needs. To ease himself back into remembering what it is like to feel.

“There is nothing silly about waiting until you want to. Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise. It is your body to do with as you will.”

Waiting. Not waiting. One lover. A hundred lovers. There should be no judgment either way. A woman is not defined by what she does or doesn’t do in the bedroom.

I thought women were always my competitors, people to be jealous of. How wrong I was.

I hate him. But I love him more.

“I’d forgotten. Having spent a full year with no one to touch, no one to talk to—it was you who reminded me what it is to live.

Because in you, I found my match. In you, I found my equal.”