Page 101 of Tarnished Crown

“You know that this wasn’t your fault either, right?” I said abruptly. “You have protected far more people than were lost. I’ve watched you do it.”

Like Henrik, during the battle today.

Like me, the entire time he had known me.

He huffed out a bitter breath. “You don’t know the half of the things I have done and the people I have failed to protect.”

No, but I had some idea, from the rumors and his own comments. And it didn’t matter.

“I don’t need to know those things,” I responded quietly. “I knowyou. I’ve seen what you do when you think no one is watching, and don’t think I haven’t realized that I would be dead several times over if it weren’t for you.”

Evander huffed. “I saw you with that sword today. I don’t think I get the credit for that.”

“The sword that you gave me when you didn’t have to,” I countered.

“After Itookyou,” he fired back quickly.

“After yousavedme from being Iiro’s puppet.”

Even if that wasn’t his intention, he had kept me from being manipulated. Perhaps I would have even married Theo anyway, one day, but I would never have wanted it to be like that, away from my family and home and when so many things surrounding it didn’t make sense.

“Don’t kid yourself, Lemmikki,” he argued. “We both know I would have taken you anyway. If I thought Theodore was the other half of your soul, and you were going to fling yourself from the nearest balcony as soon as you got back to the estate, Istillwould have taken you to keep that alliance from harming my clan.” He let out a slow breath. “And it still wouldn’t have been close to the worst thing I have ever done to keep them safe.”

The veracity of his words settled over me, but they didn’t sting like I expected them to. I had known all of that on some level for a while now.

It was true that Evander could be ruthless and calculating, but I couldn’t honestly say that either of my parents would have done anything differently in Evander’s situation.

Or that I would have, for that matter.

“I think you sometimes forget that I’m a princess,” I said.

He snorted softly. “I thinkyousometimes forget that you’re a princess.”

Ignoring him, I went on. “I mean that I come from a family of rulers. I’ve never had to make the decisions you have, but I know that weighing the greater good comes with the territory.”

He shifted to look at me, his features barely visible in the flickering firelight, but said nothing. Another shiver went through me, and I tried to hide it, but as usual, Evander missed nothing.

With a sigh, he stretched his arm out toward me in an invitation.

I could have said no,shouldhave said no, but something in the set of his shoulders made me wonder if this was about more than my warmth. If after everything, he needed the comfort of this as much as I did.

I slid next to him on the straw mattress, laying my head against his solid chest. Almost immediately, I began to thaw. He pulled me against himself, wrapping his muscled arm firmly around me, and I greedily inhaled his familiar scent.

He smelled like his bed, smoky, earthy, edged with something sweet, but also somehow like the air just before it rained. Powerful and unexpected and just the slightest bit dangerous.

When Theo’s arms were around me, I had felt safe. Contained. Like something fragile to be protected. But being here with Evander was none of those things. I felt wild and unrestrained andterrified, like a part of me that had been missing my entire life was whole now.

But what did that mean for when it was gone again?

It was an unwelcome reminder of why this was everything I never wanted to feel.

A hitching breath sounded in the silence, and it took me a moment to realize it was coming from me. Evander’s arm tightened around me. I wanted to be embarrassed he had heard, but instead, the unexpected comfort opened the floodgates for the tears I so often refused to shed.

I cried for everyone who had been a victim of Ava’s games. Dmitriy and Igor, who had died because of them, Evander, who had suffered a childhood of abuse at her despicable hands.

But I was ashamed to admit that I also cried for myself, for this gut-wrenching feeling of losing something I never even wanted to begin with.

Evander held me quietly through it all, even as my tears soaked through his shirt. He pressed his lips into my hair, which only made me cry harder.