Page 76 of Fragile Oath

I would ask you how you’re doing, but you would say you’re fine.

“Are you having any trouble with Mikhail?” he said instead.

“No.” I faked something closer to a normal expression. “Nothing I can’t handle, and anyway, you have more than enough of your own problems to be concerned with.”

Problems I’m actively contributing to. Was the Gracie solution something everyone else had seen? Was it something he was considering before I announced that we were betrothed? Should I ask him if he wanted to call it off now?

I couldn’t get the words out, though, or any words out, with the way my throat suddenly felt like it was closing over. So I nodded my head and closed my door, all the while thinking how this was my fault.

All of it.

* * *

I was spiraling,drowning in an endless whirlpool of guilt and panic and panic and guilt, a perpetual cycle. My knees refused to hold me up any longer, so I slid my back down along the wall, crumpling to the floor beneath me.

I had lost Davin. And I had made Davin lose everything.

Everything seemed so clear now. Every road I could have walked down. The path I could have — should have — chosen.

Hadn’t Jocelyn tried to tell me?

I understand,I had told her. But she had known it for the lie it was. Understanding came too late to help any of us.

It was clear to see now that if I had told Davin the truth from the very beginning, he would have taken care of it. If I had been able to bring myself to be honest with him, none of this would have happened.

Wouldn’t his safety have been an easy price to pay for looking weak?

My breaths came too quickly, my pulse thundering in my ears while each of my missteps assaulted me. The quick rapping of Malishka’s paws rang out as she paced between me and the door before coming to sit next to me. Her sleek head leaned against my shoulder as she let out a small whine.

“I’m all right, Malishka.” I was even lying to the dog now, calling her by the name my father had used when he had tried to comfort me.

The herbs will grow back stronger, Malishka.

A rare stream of tears fell down my cheeks as I put my head against my knees, trying and failing to take a deep breath. I must have missed the sound of the door, because the next thing I knew there was a set of arms around me, and an unexpected voice in my ear, firm, but gentler than I had ever heard it.

“In and out,” the low tone said. “Just like that.”

From this distance, Gwyn smelled like wind and steel. It was comforting, reminding me of the days my father would take me to find plants growing in the mountains around our estate.

“I can’t.” It took everything I had to admit that, to her of all people.

“You can. It just feels that way now.” She spoke with the same confidence she had wielding her sword, the confidence she seemed to have in every aspect of her life. Was that just her tone, or did she have experience with this same crushing feeling?

It was hard to imagine the fierce woman huddled on the ground falling apart the way I was now. Then again, she never would have wound up here. She would have fought to begin with, but I hadn’t. I had tried to play a game, and I had lost.

Storms, but I had lost.

“Do you think he should marry Gracie?” I asked, throwing away what was left of my dignity.

Gwyn rocked back on her heels to look at me. This close, I noticed a pale sprinkling of freckles across the light-brown skin of her nose and cheeks, the pattern moving when her features flattened into exasperation.

“Davin was only talking to Gracie so much tonight because he needs to know something she knows.” She said it in a voice that brooked no nonsense, like I was an idiot. “He doesn’t want to marry her.”

“He would have,” I countered.

She gave a single, sharp shake of her head. “He would have done what he had to for his people, but he had plenty of chances to propose to her and instead, he proposed to you. She knows that, and so does stupid, meddling Fiona.”

“I hate her,” I muttered, talking about Fiona and also, unfairly, Gracie. Even tonight, Gracie had been perfect. She was kind to the servants, polite to the rest of the table, just like always. I knew it wasn’t fair to group her in with Fiona’s superiority and condescension. “Almost as much as you hate me.”

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