Page 231 of Onyx Cage: Volume II
“You said you wanted to share your life with me.” Her tone implied that the words had been a lie, the first in a long line of betrayals as she saw them, rather than the deepest truth I had ever given anyone.
“Yes, Lemmikki.” My eyes bored into hers, willing her to see the unvarnished honesty of those words. “Mylife. Not my death.”
She huffed out a breath, shaking her head. “You don’t just get to pick the parts you want, Evander. Either you’re all in, or you aren’t.”
How very like her to see the black-and-white of this without the important distinction of her storms-damnedlifeas the consequence of choosing wrong.
“I will never be all in if it means you needlessly dying,” I pointed out the obvious, since she seemed to be deliberately ignoring it.
“Fine.” The clipped word was less of a concession than a temporary avoidance. “If you were so worried about that, why didn’t we both go to Lochlann?”
I blinked. Why hadn’t I abandoned all of my responsibilities and the people who were mine to protect, the men who were dying for me, the clan that was both my right and my obligation by birth?
“I had a clan to protect,” I said simply, stating what should have been obvious.
Her lips parted as she reared back in her chair. “Whereas I just had my next tiara to pick out?”
Whereas up until you had claimed your share of Besklanovvy, you had never once referred to these people as yours. You don’t even like Socair. There was no need for you to give your life on behalf of people who hated you just because you made the choice to marry me.
She knew that as well as I did.
“It’s different, and you know it,” I said.
“I don’t, actually,” she shot back, eyes narrowed and chin raised high, ready to fight. “Explain it to me.”
I searched for a way to put it into words, settling on the simplest explanation.
“The difference is that I swore an oath to protect my people, and you didn’t.”
The difference is that I had no discernible way out and you did.
She pursed her lips, acceptance and annoyance warring on her features. “And what about the promise you made to me? That we were in this together? Or did you conveniently forget aboutthatoath?”
No, I hadn’t forgotten, but there were other oaths that had superseded that one. The promise I had whispered to her in the middle of the night was not equal to the vow I had made her twice over, something I reminded her of.
“I also made a vow to protect you.”Twice, Lemmikki.
She shot forward in her chair, grasping her glass in a white-knuckled grip. “We made a vow to protect each other!” Her voice rose with every syllable. “But you didn’t even give me the option of fulfilling mine when you left me in the middle of the night with a stars-damned note!”
She wasn’t wrong on that front. All of the choices had been impossible, and only one had kept her alive.
But I wasn’t an idiot. I had known that it would hurt her, and seeing that pain written plainly on her features was like a kick to the gut.
My frustration with her anger gave way to the same clawing guilt I had felt walking away from her that morning. Even then, I had known she deserved more of an explanation than I could give her, but I hadn’t trusted myself to do what needed to be done.
At least I could explain that to her now.
“I knew that if I told you, you would try to talk me out of it, and because it was already destroying me to leave you,” I emphasized, trying to make her understand that the choice had not been an easy one, “I would cave. Then you would die.” Or at least, she would have, were it not for the makeshift soldiers she scrounged up at the eleventh hour. I acknowledged as much. “TheBesklanovvynever occurred to me, and I didn’t see another way to keep you safe.”
She met my eyes for a long moment, so many things churning in her pale-green gaze that I couldn’t begin to decipher them all.
“And what if there hadn’t been?” Her voice was quieter now, each word falling like a corpse hitting the ground, like the moment you reach out your arms for your fallen comrade only to see there’s nothing left to save. “If I hadn’t been able to get the Unclanned? What if you had died, and I hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye?”
Her voice broke on the last word, and it fractured something inside of me knowing I still couldn’t give her the answer she wanted.
My voice was softer when I spoke, a quiet plea for her to understand. “Then I would have been grateful I did everything I could to keep you from that same fate.”
She looked away, shaking her head in resignation, like she already felt the same impending chasm that I did yawning between us and filled with all the shades of crimson and gray that painted the landscape of our lives.