Page 113 of Diamond Angel

She releases a slow breath. When she blinks, a tiny tear squeezes out of her eye. She turns to the side so that all I can see is her profile. Then her eyelids close and she tilts her face up towards the sky as though she’s calling on a higher power for help.

“Okay,” she says at last, though her eyes are still closed. “What happened?”

“I told her I couldn’t marry her.”

“Why on earth would you tell her that?”

I stare at the woman as though she’s lost her mind. She probably has. That would explain why she had put us through this hell. At least that would make sense. Make it easier to forgive her.

“I couldn’t justify marrying her when I was—am—in love with her sister.”

45

ILARION

It’s not quite the way I’d imagined this conversation going. But at least it’s finally out there. Not that I’d been very subtle about how I felt before now. Who fucking knows?

Then again, Taylor can be laughably obtuse when she decides to be.

Her eyes are wide and her face drains of color the moment the words are out of my mouth. “I…I didn’t just hear you say that. I’m going to pretend that I didn’t ever hear that.”

“No, you heard it,” I snarl angrily, desperately, hopelessly. “Worse, you already knew it. You’ve just refused to accept it.”

“What did you tell her?” she demands. “Did you tell her you were in love with me specifically?”

“Of course not.”

I’d come so fucking close, though.

It was the day she’d finally been returned to a proper room of her own after a seven-month stint in the hospital wing. She was sitting by the window in the evening, watching the sunset. Everything was looking brighter in those days, both inside and out. She was starting to make progress. She could walk on her own, could feed herself.

Mila and Dima advised me not to speak to her just yet, but it had been almost seven months and I felt she was owed an explanation. She had to know that the world she woke up in was not the same as it was when she fell into the darkness.

“Are you okay?” Celine asked when I’d lingered at her doorway. “You seem preoccupied.”

I glanced down at her hand, at the engagement ring sitting prettily on her finger. She never took it off.

“Is it wedding stress? Because I was thinking, we could—”

“There isn’t going to be a wedding, Celine.”

Fuck.The words ripped themselves out of my throat, but even when I saw the horror on her face as she processed them, I couldn’t regret saying it. I’d been waiting so long. It felt good to speak the truth.

And I think, deep down, she knew even before I said it. In more than half a year of her recovery, I’d made zero attempts to touch her intimately. I avoided it whenever I could, doing little more than handing her her walking cane or helping her back to her feet if she fell.

I might as well have been her physical therapist.

In that moment, I had a coward’s thought:Please let her not ask any questions.It was already so hard to see so much of Taylor in Celine’s face. The same shade of green in her eyes. The same resolute twist of her lips. It’s like I was being haunted by the ghost of the woman I wanted but could never have, as she possessed the body of the woman I could have but would never want.

She stared at me for a moment, a pained smile stuck on her face. “What do you mean? Dr. Baranov told me I was doing great, that I would be able to resume normal activity soon. So why…?”

“You know why.”

She shook her head. “You were keeping your distance to help my recovery. You were just trying to…to be sensitive to my…”

Another sob, a fully realized one, escaped her lips.

“Oh my god…something’s changed.”

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