Page 67 of Sunder

He shifted ever so slightly. And it was away rather than toward her, and that was telling enough. “You can tell me,” shereminded him. “If I’m supposed to share everything with you, then it should go both ways.”

Athan gave her a look in return. “It is not a matter ofsupposed to.Just that you can.”

Orma refused to prickle. “All right,” she amended. “You can, too.”

His lips quirked upward, which was a marked improvement, but he looked at their conjoined hands rather than at her. “I am concerned,” he began at last. “I wish to think well of your parents. To understand their decisions for your care. At this moment, however, I do wonder if it will affect my opinion of them.”

If she would not prickle, she would not bristle, either. “They did the best they could,” she insisted. “If... if some of the healers went too far, they were dismissed.” Which had happened. On numerous occasions.

Which Athan would see when he looked at her records spread out before him like a tome of hurts upon his mate, and he’d think her defective and her parents cruel when neither was true, was it?

She wanted her hand back. Wanted not to have asked.

She took a breath instead and fought for calm. “We needn’t look at them,” she declared. “We could even burn them, then no one would have to see the wretched things again.”

His hold on her hand grew soft, even as his thumb moved gently over her knuckles. He should kiss them again. That was better than this knot in her chest that felt a great deal like yet another scar. “No,” he soothed. “We won’t do that. They are important, even if I dislike their contents. I shall just have to read them as a professional rather than as your mate. Otherwise...” he shook his head.

A lump settled in her throat. “Don’t do that,” she urged. “Or... I don’t know. Just... I see your point about the elixirs. I’d ratherthey come from you. Keeps things simple, yes? And you need to know what’s in them.” She felt a shiver, and it wasn’t cold but it was from a strain, and he abandoned her hand so he could put his arm about her shoulders instead.

Better. Far better.

“I don’t know if I want to read them,” she admitted. “I haven’t. Before. No one offered. Pointless, after all, since I was there.” She sighed and tucked herself more closely into his side. “But I was drugged through most of it, so how did they think I’d understand what they were doing and why?”

Athan ran his fingers through her hair, over and over. Until some of the tension left her throat and shoulders. Until she could take a full breath and be certain she was not on the cusp of tears after all. “They should have explained,” Athan murmured. “Every bit. You should not have been left confused and hurting.” His hold on her tightened. “I should have been with you. I know their concerns,” he interrupted before she could remind him of the reasons he had not been summoned. “But of one thing, I am certain. It would have been better if we faced it together. If you had known you were not alone.”

She hadn’t been. Mama was always there afterward. Servants to change bandaging and apply salves and smooth healing ointments into abraded skin. She wanted to say all that, so he’d stop thinking she’d been locked away and forgotten, but it all got stuck in her throat. “They didn’t know,” she said instead, because that was the truth of it.

She had. In a way. When she’d struggled and pleaded, even as they carried her off. Soothed her with potions and elixirs while she cried.

When all she wanted was him.

He turned his head, eyeing her carefully. “Did they ever ask you?”

Her brow furrowed, and she tried not to grow uncomfortable beneath his stare. “Ask me what?”

He took a breath and made a very great effort to keep his expression as calm as his tone. “What you needed.”

He expected her to remember that? Feelings were stronger than their words. How a touch felt, sometimes welcome and desperately craved, other times were like a different sort of pain. Wrong. Not the one the bond wanted, the bondneeded...

The answer came then. Right and real and truthful, even if she could sift through all her memories to be sure of it.

“No,” she answered him, the bond full of pain that was part hers, partly his. “No, they didn’t.”

He didn’t hum. Said nothing at all.

Just pulled her a little closer and kissed the top of her head and let her feel the little tendrils of... something.

Not bitterness. Couldn’t be that. Because no one was at fault for any of it.

But... it was something.

And it felt better when she curled into his side and listened to his steady breaths.

“I will,” Athan promised her. “I’m sorry they didn’t, but that won’t be us.”

And that felt best of all.

???

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