Page 102 of Onyx Cage: Volume II

A hitched breath escaped her, and I pulled away far enough to take in the tears streaming down her cheeks.

It wasn’t the first time I had seen her cry, let alone the first time today. Though this could have been a resurgence of her grief, a reaction to the day, that explanation fell flat in my mind.

“Lemmikki.” I brushed the wetness from her cheeks with my thumbs, pressing my lips against her forehead the way I had wanted to do from the moment she walked into the breakfast room today. The desire to comfort was entirely new to me, but so was everything else about this moment. About her.

“What is it?” I murmured against her skin.

“Nothing.” She shook her head against the obvious lie, correcting it in the next breath. “Everything.”

She tilted her head forward the way she did when she wanted her curls to cover her face—to hide from me—sliding toward the edge of the bed in the same move.

I had told myself I wouldn’t interfere with what she wanted tonight, ever, but like hell was I letting her run away now. Not when she was in pain.

I held her hips more firmly, pulling her body back fully onto mine, willing her to talk to me.

She met my gaze once more, sucking in a breath. “You said no.”

“What?” I didn’t bother to mask my confusion.

I certainly hadn’t said no just now, nor was I planning to.

Rowan lifted her chin in resolve, her body tense over mine. “I asked if you were planning on proposing when you left. And you saidno.”

I closed my eyes against the obvious hurt in her features. From the moment she had asked that question the first time, I had known the answer would bother her. Then our conversation had spiraled into something else, as so many of them did, and we had never revisited the subject.

Would I have, if I had known it was causing her pain?

Even now, I wasn’t sure. Talking had never been our strong suit, and there wasn’t much I could say to reassure her without an outright lie.

“I keep trying to get past it.” There was no vitriol in her tone, nor accusation. Only a quiet rationality, a plea for a better explanation. “But what does that mean, exactly? That you’re here out of convenience? Luck? Did you come out of spite and then stay because I agreed to marry you?”

I opened my eyes, considering the best way to answer her.

There was nothing at all convenient about coming here, but had there been spite? Perhaps.

Looking back, there was more than that. Panic. Betrayal. A visceral need to remind her that she absolutely the storms damned hell did not belong to Korhonan.

But hadn’t I also wondered, deep down, whether she wanted that reminder? Whether there was something salvageable in the complicated web we had woven for ourselves?

I tucked a stray curl behind her ear, letting my hand linger on her face and hoping she understood a fraction of what I was trying to convey.

“When I got Korhonan’s letter about marrying you, I didn’t know what I was going to do,” I told her truthfully. “So many of your choices had already been taken from you in Socair. I thought this was the one thing you were choosing for yourself. Was it really my place to take that from you?”

Even once I got here, I had tried like hell to make myself agree to honor her wishes, even if she didn’t seem to know what the hell those wishes were.

“But you came,” she pressed.

“I couldn't seem to stop myself.” Not that I had tried very hard. “I needed to know...to see it for myself. And then I got here, and I realized that no matter what else was happening, you were still mine.”

I had known that on some level from the moment I saw her, but more so when she came into my rooms that first night. She had still been every bit as compelled toward me as I was toward her.

She froze, her features going tight like she had been stabbed in the abdomen all over again, and I furrowed my brow.

“Is that what it comes down to, even now, Evander? The fact that you think you own me.” Her voice was a quiet whisper against the eternal backdrop of all the ways we managed to hurt each other.

To misunderstand one another.

So I chose my words carefully this time, ensuring there was no room for doubt.