Page 87 of Haunted

“I know King Sieffre has two sons who’ve been very attentive to you.”

The soft lines of her face sharpen. “How would you know that?”

A little birdy told me. I laugh in my head but answer solemnly. “My particular skill set involves knowing.”

She pauses in her circling to narrow her eyes. “I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to drive me away because of last night.”

Because I nearly took you for my own. Because I envisioned kissing your pink lips and looking into your eyes as you gasped my name over and over. “I’m helping you understand I’m not someone worth saving.”

“We’ve been over this.”

“Let me have my say. While I offer my home to you, I don’t want anything from you in return.” Lies. All lies.

“Just my presence,” she says.

I want her. I cannot deny this any longer. Her presence is my balm. Her light, my salvation.

Salvation from a past that haunts me.

I smile. “I’ll concede that. Yes, your presence might be all I require.”

She comes closer, and I recoil, falling against a chair and fumbling to the side. She doesn’t laugh, and I’m glad, because I don’t know what I’ll do if she does.

I cannot let her touch me.

“Anything else you want to goad me with?” Her irritation fuels her. “Or anything you want to say to scare me off? You make absolutely no sense. You lure me here, but you hold me at arm’s length. You hint at secrets, as if you’re dying to reveal them, but you make vague references to how dark and evil you are. I have yet to spot any evidence of that.”

If you saw your prince, then you would know.

I have to give her something, as angry as she is. I can’t leave our conversation like this. “I’ll tell you my tale. Then you can decide for yourself what kind of man I am.”

“All right.” She perches on the back edge of a sofa with her arms crossed.

“My liege, Lord Siarl, recruited me to be a spy and gain access to Empress Rhianu’s inner circle. I became a chancellor in her court, with the expectation I’d betray information about my province to her, as I was expected to convey information about her region to Lord Siarl. I always stood to the empress’s right, behind her, in the shadows. She asked my opinion on everything, in private. I was to be unseen. Wherever she went, I was there, only not there. It was understood that I didn’t exist.”

Most of this is more or less true.

“You were a double agent.”

“Of the highest caliber.” I scrutinize Niawen’s face for a reaction; she gives me none. “Lord Siarl knew I had planted myself into the most essential parts of her life.”

“What changed?” she asks. “Why’d she exile you in the end? Did she find out who you were?”

“My downfall was on a personal level. I’d betrayed the empress’s heart.”

The cogs in her head are trying to figure out what I mean. I don’t elaborate.

“On the exterior, I was an impenetrable crust,” I say. “Unyielding. The empress thought I was ruthless in the ways I extracted information, not knowing Lord Siarl and I fed her false intelligence. On the inside, I had a soft spot for her. Because I was near her always, I became aware of her weaknesses. No man thought she carried any. But I learned a horrid truth. She was being controlled. A far greater might made her do the abominable things she’d done to gain rule over her realm.”

“How do you know she didn’t want to do the things she did? I don’t believe a person is without agency. Even when tied in chains, there’s always a choice.”

“I believe you’re right. I didn’t see her true nature at first. I felt compassion for her plight. One day I barged in on the empress having a conversation with someone I assumed was her dragon. She was arguing. As I listened, I realized she was begging, pleading for mercy. She was weeping on the floor. I couldn’t bear it. I swept into the room and knelt beside her. Desperate to be consoled, she threw herself into my arms because she trusted me.”

“Sounds like a hormonal malfunction,” Niawen says.

My eyebrows quirk. “Are you belittling your sex?”

“I’m a woman. I know how we are. Sometimes we feel as though the world’s ending when our turmoil is inescapable. Come on, Caedryn, you saw me when I arrived. I would have bared my soul to you. I was desperate for relief.”

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