Page 50 of Even Angels fall
I can’t forget the way she looked at me when I told her I was sending her back to her father.
It’s haunting me, even when I close my eyes.
Those dark blue eyes were all but begging me to reconsider, pleading that she hadn’t heard me right.
I did this.
Somehow, it feels like I made her attack me.
That might be why I couldn’t find it in me to lock her up in her room. Not that it changed anything. She hasn’t moved from there since she left the attack scene.
It’s been cleaned in the meantime, but each time I leave my office to grab something to eat or just get a few hours of sleep, I don’t miss the two indents I made with her daggers on the cross.
And I hate myself for those.
At least we got the doctor in time. René called me afterwards, saying that she should be alright, as long as she didn’t overuse her hand over the next couple of days.
There’s been no noise coming from her room that would indicate that she’s been doing anything other than sleep, maybe read, or watch something on the computer that’s in her room, so I’m not too concerned about her hand.
I’m more concerned about what I’m going to do with her.
Knowing what he did to her, I can’t send her back to him.
But what does it leave me with?
Because I don’t think Michaël will let me keep her if I don’t marry her, after all.
I’ve been trying to avoid her at all costs, so that my dragon’s instincts can be kept in check, but I don’t see any other way now.
What I’ve been trying to avoid for the past week might be the only thing that would save her.
I don’t need a wife in my life. I don’t even need a woman.
I’ve seen what it did to my father when we lost my mother. I’ve seen how her loss drove him to madness and then to taking his own life.
I don’t want that for myself.
But I’m not even sure it would happen with Angélique.
Am I willing to risk her safety on what-ifs?
Angélique isn’t like my mother, though. She isn’t human. She might not be able to shift, but she still has shifter genetics, or else René’s spray wouldn’t have worked so well.
I thought she was like a porcelain doll that would break at the first sign of hardship, but she proved to me that it isn’t true. She doesn’t break; she retaliates.
And now, I have a decision to make.
There is a tentative knock on my door.
“Enter,” I say without lifting my eyes.
I’ve been studying Versailles’ inner plans. I’m not planning on invading it to kill her father—even if that thought actually crossed my mind several times in the past hours—but I needed something to focus on when my mind started to swirl, and that’s what I came up with.
“Elhyor?”
I’m surprised to see Cassiopé in my office. It’s not usually a place she likes to be. There’s too much light coming from the colored windows, and it doesn’t hold any of her precious books, either.
“What can I do for you, little Cass?”
