Page 102 of Hollow Court
“I don’t think you knew what you wanted, Galina.” Davin took several steps back, clasping his hands behind his head as he furiously looked up at the stars. “I think you came to my rooms that night believing that it could change nothing between us, and the moment you realized that wasn’t true, you looked for any reason to walk away from it.”
Silence fell, heavy with the weight of everything we had said and everything we hadn’t.
Was he right?
I hadn’t expected to feel quite so much with him that night. That much was true. Even when I left breakfast early, I hadn’t gone back to him. Instead, I had returned to my rooms to think, to ponder whether I could actually leave the family and the clan I was loyal to, for Davin’s sake.
Whether he would even want that.
And I hadn’t come up with an answer to either question before Aino knocked on the door.
Had I been looking for a reason to walk away? A way to make an impossible decision easier? Because Davin had withheld the option that would have made that choice wholly unnecessary.
If he had wanted to marry me, he could have asked for my hand as Marquess of Lithlinglau, and my uncle would have jumped at the chance for that alliance. But he hadn’t, and I hadn’t been sure I was willing to part with my life in Ram for a guard.
When he finally met my gaze again, I shook my head, my anger dying like the final embers of a long-forgotten fire and leaving only icy resignation in its place.
“In the end, we both had choices to make, and what matters is that we didn’t choose each other. You can’t honestly tell me that you think that’s a basis for…” I trailed off, because I didn’t even know what, if anything, he was getting at with all his confessions and accusations. “For anything.”
Davin looked away, shaking his head. “No. I suppose not.”
It was unreasonable, the way my heart dropped into my stomach. Had I wanted him to argue?
Yes. Of course I had. Stupid,stupidgirl that I was.
“Well then,” I said as briskly as I could. “Let’s just go back to being allies and forget this ever happened.”
He made a bitter sound in the back of his throat. “Sure, Galina. We’ll just tuck this utterly forgettable moment in the backs of our minds with the rest of them, shall we?”
Davin took a step closer, closing the gap between us once again, his eyes full of a challenge I didn’t know how to answer.
“I’ll help you pick out your husband while you pretend you don’t want to stab everyone who so much as looks at me and we both go on like we don’t know what it is to watch the other one come completely undone.”
His hand came to rest on my face, his thumb brushing against my bottom lip. “Is that what you want?”
No. That’s the farthest thing from what I want.
But I can hardly handle the idea, the hope, of anything else, only to see it turn to ashes in front of me again.
“Yes,” I lied, the word breathier than I meant it to be. “That’s what I want.”
One heartbeat passed, then another, my chest rising and falling in sync with his.
“All right, then.” He straightened up, all trace of emotion gone from his tone. “I’ll see you in the morning at breakfast.”
Though it was Davin who walked away this time, I couldn’t help the feeling that he had been right. That somehow, I was still the one running away.
Then again, he had never really given me a reason to stay.
THIRTY-FOUR
Davin
It wasrare I let myself miss Mac, but tonight his ghost haunted me.
Or perhaps I just wished it would, that I could have any piece of him at all.
That I could go back to the days of lounging around a lake with him and having the nerve to think the worst thing that could happen was him having kids that would interfere with our nights at the tavern.