Page 42 of The Prince's Mage

She didn’t even know she’d died, and Gavril was too much of a coward to tell her. He could not bear to find out if his nightmares were accurate.

Over a month and Gavril still hadn’t quite cracked how to connect his knowledge of Marcella’s language into her people’s system of runes or how to get his vitae to respond to those runes the way it responded to his people’s runes. If he could cast a Sordes rune with one hand—do what his people thought impossible because of their belief in corrupted vitae—then he could prove their war was based on a lie.

But he was nowhere close. And his exhaustion was only slowing him down further.

Aimilia was doing most of the work. At least most of the thinking and planning.

Gavril was mostly focused on learning.

He started tracing a rune on her shoulder. He hadn’t worked up the courage to tell that one yet. Hope.

He called her his hope. He could not help himself from hoping even as his nightmares taunted him, reminded him of the secrets he’d kept and the lies he’d told, and the fact that it was ingrained in his very nature to continue to do so. How his hope was wholly in vain.

Aimilia wouldn’t stop nagging him about how he needed to tell her they were married. And he knew she was right, but how could he find the courage when he knew it would shatter what little he did have with her?

If she knew she was his wife, would she still let him hold her after her nightmares?

She wouldn’t. She would look at him with the same horror and disgust in her eyes as she had when he’d revealed the full extent of his study of her and her people’s magic.

Worse even.

“This… This place is not helping,” Marcella muttered. She lifted her head to look at him.

His breath caught in his throat. Had she changed her mind?

“Say the word, and we will go,” Gavril breathed out, shifting so he could look down at her. He made no effort to conceal the hope starting to swell up in him. “I do not care about my magic. If you want to escape, I will take you.”

He was not strong enough to offer it without himself attached to the offer.

He did not want to know if she would say yes to that.

She shook her head. “No. I mean… the palace. It is suffocating us. Maybe just… Maybe we just leave the palace for a few hours? Am I… is that allowed?”

Aimilia’s voice in the back of his head was screaming at him to just tell her she wasn’t a prisoner. She was his wife; of course it was allowed. But… was being his wife really any different than being a prisoner?

He tightened his grip on her. She was still walking slowly, leaning on him, trying and failing to sleep most of the day as well as night.

Thanks to his successful mission—despite abandoning it to race back—he had gotten her out of her cell and into her proper room, and she wasn’t officially confined to it either. But this palace was full of Runai that would take any opportunity to get one over on a Sordes, especially one who wasn’t strong enough to defend herself. Nikias had proven just how crafty some of them were willing to be to get away with it too.

And considering Marcella’s record of constantly hiding injuries and her suffering from him, if anything did happen to her, she wouldn’t tell him.

He wasn’t going to let her go anywhere alone. He couldn’t afford to. Not when his failures had already cost her so much. He had to protect her.

“That sounds like a great idea. Aimilia and I could probably make good use of the academy library. It will be a good opportunity. But you have to stay with one of us. Within arm’s reach.” He held her closer as he spoke, and there was a furrow to her brow and she was opening her mouth, but he took her left hand in his left hand, intertwining their fingers. He held them up between them and said, “Promise?”

He could not live with himself for what he’d already let happen to her. He did not know what he was going to do if she so much as suffered another scratch because of his failures.

She stared at them for a moment before sighing and nodding. “I will stay nearby. I could not go far even if I wanted to.”

Gavril sighed and she settled back into her place against his chest where he was certain she was meant to be. He did not dare ask if she did want to go far from him.

Better to live with the little hope he had.

Chapter16

GAVRIL

The next morning Gavril arranged everything and told Aimilia while Marcella dozed off into her arms again after casting the light rune they asked her to.

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