Page 75 of Empire of Wrath and Ruin
"Explain what?" she snarled. "How you've been playing some sick game with me? Even as Lady Cantius we had no future, you said it yourself. So why play with me, Jalend?"
"It wasn't like that," I said desperately. "I never meant for this to happen. I never meant to fall in love with you."
"My father ordered the destruction of your village," I said quietly. "He gave the command that killed your family. I've known that since the day you told me who you were and who you used to be."
Livia made a sound like a wounded animal, her hands pressing against her stomach as if she might be sick. "You knew. All this time, you knew what he did to them, and you—" Her voice broke completely. "You touched me. You made me love you."
"Livia, please—"
"Don't." The word came out like a whip crack, stopping me mid-sentence. "Don't you dare say my name. Don't you dare try to explain this away. You call this love? Lying to me for months? Pretending to care while hiding who you really are?"
"I wanted to tell you, but—"
"But what? It was inconvenient? It complicated your plans?"
"But I was afraid," I said, the words torn from somewhere deep in my chest. "I was terrified that if you knew the truth, you'd look at me exactly the way you're looking at me now."
Her laugh was bitter, broken. "You were right to be afraid."
I felt something inside me crack at the raw hatred in her voice. This was what I'd dreaded, what had kept me awake countless nights—seeing the woman I loved look at me like I was poison.
"I know I don't deserve your forgiveness," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. "I know what I've done is unforgivable. But Livia, everything I felt for you, everything between us—that was real. That was the truest thing in my entire life."
"Real?" She took another step back, as if my very presence contaminated the air. "How can anything be real when it's built on lies? How can I believe a single word that comes out of your mouth?"
“The same way I believed you when I found out who you were,” I said, moving a little closer. "I found out about your family because of the festival attack, not because you trusted me. I found out every word you had told me was a lie as well, that you weren’t who you said you were.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but I pressed on.
"And tell me, Livia—were you ever going to tell me who you were? Your real name? What happened to your family?"
That stopped her short. The anger in her face flickered, replaced by something more uncertain.
"I..." she started, then fell silent.
"You were a slave whose family had been killed by Imperial soldiers," I said gently. "I was a noble. Did you know if you could trust me?"
The fight seemed to go out of her all at once. She sank down onto the edge of her bed, her hands clasped tightly in her lap.
"No," she admitted quietly. "I didn't know if I could trust you. You were nobility, and nobility had never meant anything good for people like me."
Relief flooded through me—not because she'd hidden things from me, but because she understood. She understood the impossible position we'd both been in.
"I didn't know if I could trust you either," I said, moving a little closer but still keeping my distance. "Not at first. But then I got to know you, and I realized that who you were before didn't matter. What mattered was who you are now."
"But I did trust you eventually," she said, looking up at me with those dark eyes that had haunted my dreams. "I told you everything. About my family, about what happened to them, about being a slave."
The accusation in her voice was clear, and it cut deep because it was justified.
"You didn't tell me you wanted to kill my father," I said softly.
Her face flushed. "That's different."
"Is it?"
"Yes!" But her voice lacked conviction now. "I didn't tell you because... because I thought you'd try to stop me. Or be horrified. I come from a more violent world than you do, Jalend. I didn't want to shock you."
I wanted to laugh at the irony, but it would have come out bitter. She thought I was some sheltered noble who would be horrified by violence, when the truth was, I'd been raised in the heart of the Empire's brutality. I'd seen what my father was capable of firsthand.
