Page 94 of The Prince's Mage

Marcella had once said belief was the hardest thing she did every day. To persist in it even when the answers were not what she wanted… He hadn’t fully understood then, but he was starting to.

His soldier had commanded him to have faith…

Chapter34

MARCELLA

Back in a cell was better than on a table. At least in Marcella’s opinion.

The second the door shut, she waited. Would Gavril come?

Did he even want to bother listening to her attempt to explain? Was he even going to try to explain himself to her?

The hours ticked by. No one returned with anything to eat or drink. It would be a waste if they were going to kill her soon. Still…

She waited. No Gavril.

He wasn’t coming… was he? Why would he? How could he trust any word out of her mouth wouldn’t be as fake as all the rest?

She’d spent so long accusing him of lying and being an illusion, and yet she’d justified the one she’d made of herself again and again. So often she’d never given him the chance to explain. She’d never given him the benefit of doubt. Why should she expect he’d give her hers?

Why should she expect he would deign to explain himself to someone he’d never really known at all? Despite the fact that he’d married her and hidden it for months.

Finally, she started boiling.

She slammed her left palm into the stone and screamed.

All this time. All this time.

Lying. Hiding. Making a fool of her.

She’d asked. So many times. She’d asked what the bond between them was. Every time he’d had the chance for him to just admit to what he’d done. Every time he’d failed.

He’d married her to study her.

The notebooks had never left her mind. The exposed, dirty feeling she’d felt after the table and upon seeing those notebooks returned. She was going to be sick.

She was in the corner where she had been sick last, when Gavril had been gone and her wrist was broken and she was clinging to his cloak.

The way she was still clinging to it now even though she was horrified and humiliated and hated him more than she’d ever hated him.

Because really… she still loved him.

Her anger left her when the bile in her throat did. She stumbled back over to her cot and sat on it, pulling Gavril’s cloak tightly around her.

She wasn’t any better. She’d had countless times to tell him the truth about the messages from Hypatia, about the fact that she was ordered to take him hostage, about how she’d drawn him in with false trust and fluttering lashes until she no longer remembered when it was no longer false.

And it didn’t matter.

Because even if Nikias didn’t get his way, Hypatia’s army was still coming, the Inimicus would meet her, and the peace where she got to keep Gavril was never going to be.

And now she cried.

She was so sick of crying, but this time she embraced it wholeheartedly. She was going to cry until she returned to Asentai’s embrace and had the chance to ask the goddess why. Why this? Why had this been the path of her life?

Why had she been brought back just for it to end like this?

What had it all been for?

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