Page 42 of Sunder

How was she to respond to that? “I appreciate that,” Orma began, struggling with her own self. With the guilt that threatened to crush her. With the fatigue that settled so quickly into her bones and threatened to rob of her days. Her nights. “I think... I think you are a good man. Better than I deserve.” He looked up sharply at her, and she finished before he might interject. “I don’t think I can be a suitable mate to you. I don’t... I don’t know how todoanything. I can’t help you with your work. I can barely function most of my days. I cannot offer you...” she stumbled, and she gestured vaguely over his person, then hers. “The bond will want to be consummated, but honestly, that just sounds... exhausting.”

She rubbed at her eyes, laughing humourlessly to herself. “And I’m already so tired.”

He softened, a tension leaving him she hadn’t realised was there. “Then you should go back to bed. A tray after all.”

He stood, ready to make good on his previous offer, but she reached out and stayed his hand. “It’s all the time, Athan,” she corrected as gently as she could. “I’m in bed more than I am out of it. I could easily sleep this day away, and I would wake no better in the morning.”

He sat back down as if a thread had been cut. “And no one has been able to offer you relief? Of any sort?”

She pinched her fingers to the relative size of her bottles. “My elixirs. For a little while. And I pay for it after. But for thatmoment...” she took a breath. Then another. “I get to feel like a person. Can you understand that? Where I could do things, or learn things, or... be anything at all.”

She sat back in her seat while Athan appeared thoughtful for a moment. “I should like their names,” he declared. Not with the bits of ire that had seeped out earlier. Just a statement of fact. “I should like to consult with them,” he clarified. “Not as your healer, but as your mate. To understand what you are taking, and the effects it has on you.”

A fervent refusal was on her lips. But he looked back at her, grim-faced and as if already prepared for her arguments, and she hesitated. “I don’t want you conspiring,” she admitted. “I don’t want...” she huffed out a breath and she could not force herself to take another bite, not even to appease him. “I just want to be left alone.”

His nose crinkled. “It is terrible to be alone.”

She laughed. She couldn’t help it, and he gave a rueful smile in answer. “No, it isn’t. It means you get to sleep. Don’t have to answer a bunch of questions you don’t want to answer. You get to be yourself for a little while. Just as you are. No pretending.”

He let that settle between them, leaving her to fidget and squirm and push a crumb of cheese around on her plate. She should not have said that. It was too honest, too unflattering a description of her true feelings. She wanted him to like her, and that was the wretched part. There was so little for him to admire, so little for him to find appealing, and she was hardly helping her case.

She shouldn’t lie, but she could start anew. She could claim interests from the books she’d read. Knowledge was there, even if experience was not. Speak of her willingness to be a fine mate, even if her abilities would be lacking.

She rubbed at her chest, and Athan sighed, her hand stilling when she caught him looking.

“Explain conspiring,” Athan urged, ignoring the rest of what she’d said. Or perhaps putting it aside for later scrutiny. “A discussion is a betrayal?”

Her throat hurt.

“You’ll want to see the tests for yourself,” she explained slowly. “They all did. Every time there was someone new. Can’t go off the notes of anyone else, yes? They might be faulty. The conclusions wrong. And hear me, Athan,” she leaned in close, making sure she held his eye. “There will be no more tests.”

She could not remember being so firm with another person, and she waited for his eyes to narrow, his mouth to thin.

Waited for him to look like her father did when she’d attempted even a small amount of defiance.

She steeled herself against his protests. Or perhaps the attack would come with sweet words and coaxing reminders that this was his profession, that it would be a reasonable demand for a mate of his background to try his own hand at improving her person.

She belonged to him, didn’t she?

Discussion was a courtesy. He could insist on anything. Demand anything of her, and the bond would make it seem all right. Even if the rest of her wilted even further.

But instead, he held her attention and met her posture, leaning in close over the small table. “I find it disturbing you would find such declarations necessary.”

Her shoulders hunched, and she dropped his gaze. “Are you used to being overruled? Most particularly when it comes to your care?”

It was her lips that thinned. Her eyes that narrowed. “I was a child,” she reminded him. “They knew what was best.”

If he thought differently, he made no argument. “But you aren’t any longer. Should things not have changed?”

She glared at him. She didn’t mean to, didn’t want to, but the feelings came faster than she could reason with them. “Nothingchanges,” she insisted. “Over and over. Pain and fatigue, and I have only to wonder which part of me will scream the loudest and hurt the most. My head? My hip? Or perhaps here.” She pressed her hand to her chest and did not care if he saw her rub slowly. If his shirt had dropped low on her shoulder so he could see some of the scars tangled there. “Every day. Until suddenly I was old enough, and I was told I should go out and find you. Never mind that I knew you would not be to their standard. It mattered to my cousins. My siblings. To be mated well. But not me. Better I was anywhere else. Someone else’s burden.”

The words were bitter. An outpouring of hateful doubts that had plagued her for longer than she’d cared to remember.

They knew he would not be suitable, yet they sent her anyway to the fete where the other unmated gathered. Away from their towers, all the families of the oldest blood. Without tarnish.

A history long forgotten by everyone else.

Clung to and flaunted, with high towers and overflowing coiffeurs.

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