Page 66 of Onyx Cage: Volume II

When have you ever really told me the truth?

When has any part of our relationship made that possible, Lemmikki?

“It, loosely translated, can meanpet, as Korhonan said at the Summit,” I finally said, not-so-subtly reminding her that I wasn’t the one who gave her that shoddy translation to begin with.

I expected her to drop the subject, as she usually would have, but instead, a fire burned in her eyes. She held my gaze in a clear challenge.

“And a better translation?” she demanded. “Tell me, Evander, what does it mean whenyousay it?”

My heartbeat stuttered in my chest, the way it did every time she said my name. I was still reeling from the sight of her bleeding body on the ground, the blinding panic that she could die.

She held me trapped in her verdant gaze, the invisible thread between us pulled taut to the point of breaking.

And for once, she wasn’t giving it a single inch of leeway.

I blinked, and I saw her hand clenched in my shirt, her tears in the kitchen, her resignation in the hall outside her door.

No one has hurt me since I left Bear.

The night in my rooms.

I was expecting you weeks ago.

Her shoulders were square and her jaw was set, but a storm raged in her eyes. Hadn’t I implied that I would tell her what she wanted to know if only she was brave enough to ask?

She had let Korhonan in first, but she was asking me to give up ground in this battlefield of ours, something that went against every instinct I had.

Of course, she was giving up ground as well, admitting that this mattered to her by pushing for the answer. Besides, sometimes you had to lose a battle to win a war. Was I really willing to walk away, to let her spend the rest of her life with storms-damned Korhonan rather than give her this one truth?

The air between us crackled with uncertainty. It felt like a turning point, this single word that had started out as a taunt and turned into so much more.

“It means…” I hesitated, the single act of surrender warring with everything I was. But then, hadn’t I always been willing to be something different for her? “Darling.”

The word hung in the air between us, churning in the currents of all the truths we left unsaid.

She inhaled sharply, her eyes going wide. She blinked once, then twice, her lips parting then closing once more.

In the weeks after her flogging, she was prone to bouts of silence, prolonged and intentional, like she couldn’t be bothered to speak. This was something else entirely, a speechlessness borne of disbelief, potent and expectant in the same stuttered breath.

For all that she had insisted on knowing, she didn’t seem to know what to do with the truth now that she had it. A thousandemotions flitted across her face, like she was reimagining our every interaction in the light of the information she had now.

I didn’t break her stare, unwilling or unable to look away.

Just as I was starting to wish I could pluck the words back out of the air, her features finally settled into an unmistakable mask of indignation. She shook her head, letting out a huff of air so furious I half expected it to be accompanied by actual flames.

“So let me get this straight. You take me. You call me your darling. You kiss me like I’m the other half of yoursoul?—”

Part of me wanted to remind her exactly what that kiss had felt like to both of us, and the other part wanted to leave before she pushed us to a point we couldn’t come back from.

Then again, maybe we were already there, had been from the minute I walked into that ballroom.

I clenched my jaw, willing myself not to respond while she exhumed every body we had buried for reasons that made more sense at the time.

She ignored my warning look, barreling on. “—and say it can never happen again. Then you tell me we were only ever temporary, and send me away when I know,I knowthat you saw that I was willing to stay.”

I sucked in a breath, willing a bit of patience into my rapidly beating heart.

Yes, I had seen that. I had seen that she had wanted to stay with Korhonan, then me, anyone who felt the slightest bit familiar or safe in a world that wasn’t her own. I had seen the way she was terrified to leave my side after what happened with Ava.