Page 124 of Obsidian Throne

He was considering his response, and that gave me the first surge of hope I had felt in a while.

Part of me knew I should back away, should give myself physical space and a clearer head, but I wasn’t nearly strong enough to let him go now that I finally had his arms around me.

At least, not until I knew what he was going to say.

“Before the Summit,” he began, then paused.

It surprised me. Evander rarely talked about his life before, and I couldn’t imagine why he was bringing it up now.

But I wasn’t about to interrupt him.

“Before the Summit,” he started again, “I was living my life like it was someone else’s. The things I had to do, the people I had to kill and brand and Unclan, the person I had to be to keep up a show of strength so that no one might guess my people were vulnerable under my father’s rule... All of it was slowly turning me into the monster everyone thought I was.”

“You were never a monster,” I said earnestly.

He only shook his head silently before continuing.

“Everything I did, I did for the sake of the clan. For the people my father was trying to hurt. The rare times we went to the cabin were the only times I felt human, and even then, we had all but stopped going.”

His words sliced at something inside me, but I didn’t interject again.

“So you weren’t wrong when you called me a broken shell of a person,” he said with a bitter breath.

I winced at the words I had hurled at him in the sparring room, what felt like a lifetime ago.

“That’s exactly what I was.” He shook his head, the motion rustling my curls. “Living each day waiting for the next horrible thing I had to do to my people,formy people, and wondering if all the good I was trying to do would ever be enough to make up for the bad. I was starting to believe it wouldn’t.”

I couldn’t help but run a comforting hand up and down the arm he had wrapped around me. Evander squeezed me tighter before continuing.

“I was starting to believe none of it mattered,” he said quietly. “And then…”

He paused, and I held my breath, sure he wasn’t about to say what I thought he was. But he did.

“And then I saw you.” His gaze bored into mine.

Another two tears tracked down my face, and he brushed them away gently.

“I thought that I had lost my capacity to be surprised by anyone. Or anything, really,” he added wryly. “Yet there you were, with your acerbic wit and your dangerous temper and your unending fearlessness.”

Was that how he had seen me? When I had felt weak and out of sorts at that Summit, entirely at the whims of everyone around me and desperately clinging to whatever I could?

“And the truth is,” he went on. “You were right, too, when you called me selfish.”

My chest felt crushed by that admission.

“I don’t think you’re selfish, Evander,” I hastened to clarify. “I said that what yousaidsounded selfish. I have seen you time after time put everyone and everything ahead of yourself, including me.”

“Until I didn’t,” he countered. “The thing is, that it had been months since I even felt like smiling, and suddenly, I found myself resisting the urge to laugh at every turn. I felt...whole when you were around, even then.”

The air whooshed out of me. In hindsight, it was easy to see I had felt the same, how quickly I had become out of sorts as soon as he wasn’t near.Inevitable, Theo had said, and it was true.

“Der’mo, Lemmikki.” He let out a disbelieving breath. “Part of me honestly wonders if I would have called in that blood debt even if you hadn’t been about to marry Korhonan. I think I might have done anything to make you mine, no matter the consequences.”

Maybe I should have blamed him for that, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to. Not when I understood the deep need that drove me toward him time and again.

When I didn’t say anything, he kept talking. “Then, I was selfish again when I kissed you, knowing that it wasn’t something you could possibly consent to under the circumstances. I knew I held power over you, and I promised myself I wouldn’t take advantage of that.”

On some level, I had known he felt that way, but I still hated to hear it out loud. That kiss…that kiss had been everything, and it had existed outside a world of blood debts and captive princesses.