Page 117 of The Prince's Mage

That was her greatest concern at the moment?

Gavril couldn’t stop himself. He wrapped one arm around her waist and crushed her to himself as he slid his other hand to her cheek and kissed her. The happy hum Marcella gave him as she returned the kiss only encouraged him.

He honestly did not even care if she ripped his heart out of his chest again and revealed this wasn’t real. Not now. Not while he could have this moment.

Her fingers curled into his chiton as she shifted closer. He could happily spend the rest of his life there with her and let the two armies collide around them, but then he supposed all of their efforts would be for nothing. He reluctantly pulled back, unable to resist the urge to press a last, swift kiss to the scar on the underside of her jaw before cradling her face in both hands.

“I believe I owe you an explanation.”

Marcella’s dazed look as she slowly opened her eyes almost broke his restraint. She blinked. “What?”

“My wife, my darling wife, my beautiful hope, you must know, I did this—” He skimmed his fingers over the markings on her left wrist, her hand still pressed against his heart, pleased to see her flush deepen and her shiver slightly at the motion as dawn began to break the horizon. “—because I was desperate and terrified and I saw in you an answer to all the prayers I had but did not have a word for until you gave it to me. I did not know your ignorance of our customs, and I was afraid, so afraid. I had forced you into a marriage, and worse—you did not even know it. By the time I realized you did not know, I was yours so irretrievably and it turned me into more of a coward than I already was.”

“No—” The haze in her eyes started to clear, but he silenced her just by wrapping his fingers around her wrist.

“Please, let me finish. I owe you an explanation for our marriage, the promises I made, and why I hid what I’d done to you. I foolishly believed that if I married you my family would respect our laws regarding the spouses of Runai. That is why I did it. I thought making you my wife would keep them from putting you on those sickening tables and once it was done, it was done. It failed horribly anyway and I could not even fault you for your hatred of me even though I knew I loved you then.”

Marcella let out a soft gasp, but whether it was from the revelation or from his grip pressing her hand harder against his chest, he wasn’t sure.

“I knew when you stood in that cell and cursed me that I loved you. I was in agony to see you in so much pain. You have been my hope for peace since the beginning, but more than that you have been my hope of love returned. But I believed you could never love me. I was the reason you were in this horror to begin with. A man so weak and pathetic he could not even protect his own wife from his family. I tried to shield myself from the pain of hope unfulfilled. I tried to simply focus on my promises. My promise to protect you. My promise to my family—a promise I made only because I was out of options since they would not respect the law that you were my wife. I needed to promise something to keep you off the table so I promised knowledge.”

“You have been forgiven for that. I have not held that against you in a long time,” Marcella murmured, her fingers splaying out over his heart. He could feel it beat stronger, trying to reach her touch.

“Still, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry for it all. I just wanted you to want to live even if the only reason you wanted to live was to hurt me—I loved you so much that was acceptable to me. But little by little,mea spes, you gave me hope that maybe not all was lost, and weak man that I am, I could not resist. And yet I feared losing the little you gave me, so I kept my secrets and put it off and put it off. I promised I would tell you when we had peace.”

He lowered his gaze to their hands, unable to find the strength to face her.

“That would be when I could let you go back to your people safely and have the marriage annulled if that was your wish. At least, that is what I believed, but I do not know if even a miracle would have given me the strength to be able to let you go. So truly, my hope was that would be when I would have the best chance of convincing you my deception was done out of weakness, not malice, and that you might choose to forgive me and stay anyway. That I could love you enough for long enough that maybe out of all the love I poured into you just an ounce would come back to me.”

His whisper faded into the air, and he kept his eyes on their hands, but he felt her other hand shift to his hair.

“More than an ounce,” she whispered, gently pulling the back of his head up to look at her. “Much more.”

His grip on her waist tightened.

Her hand over his heart flexed. She whispered, “So… tell me… have I succeeded? Am I to be trusted with your heart again?”

“Say it to me. What you promised me you would say again the night before you were arrested.”

“Gavril… I love you.”

He smiled up at her, the dawn light framing her, and she took his breath away. “My heart has been in your hands since these marks have been on our wrists. I never took it back, not truly. I never will. It is yours, my hope, my wife.”

Then she pulled her hand back from his chest to wrap it around his, pulling it toward her and settling his palm over her own heart, letting it span across her collarbone. She whispered, “As mine is yours, my protector, my husband.”

Marcella pressed her lips to his, slowly, cautiously. Her hesitancy made him feel like he was an illusion that might slip through her grip. Gavril cupped her cheek and returned her kiss just as haltingly, tender and soft. His hand curled into her peplos when he felt her heart beat faster. He could feel her legs shifting as she moved to deepen the kiss, and Gavril moved to respond in kind when the sound of a throat clearing stilled both their movements.

The second after, Gavril tightened his grip on Marcella, ready to do whatever he needed to in order to protect her from the consequences of coming to see him. He spotted the source of the noise the second Marcella did, standing in the early dawn light.

Konstantin.

Chapter43

GAVRIL

Hypatia’s husband stood with his arms crossed, eyeing the two of them with a strange look in his eyes. Gavril couldn’t quite read it, but he didn’t like it. He pulled Marcella closer, and then he realized it would be a strange thing for any man to see someone who was in almost every way the replica of his wife in the arms of another man, even knowing they were different people.

Even if that wife was a demon.

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