‘Then which part is?’ His voice was too low to make out any sort of intonation.
‘The part that cannot bear staying here knowing that I lost you.’ A strangled gasp tore out of her as she tried and failed to hold back her tears. She turned to run, but he was standing in front of her. Right there in front of her with scarcely a breath between them. She sucked in a gulp of air, her fingernails biting into her palms to distract her and stop more tears from falling.
‘You lied to me.’ His voice shook from emotion, but she did not know if it was anger or something else. His eyes burned with it.
‘I am sorry I didn’t tell you.’ The way he was looking at her...it was as if he wanted to devour her. A tender ache bloomed inside her, but she didn’t know if the change in his eyes was her imagining his change in sentiment towards her. ‘I don’t know how to make it right, but you should not suffer any longer. Take Glannoventa. Take Mulcasterhas. Take everything and know that I will live my life being sorry for how I hurt you. I have already arranged an escort with Cedric. I leave in the morning.’
His eyes widened in shock and she used his moment of stunned silence to dart past him. Praying that she would reach the privacy of her chamber before she dissolved into a mass of tears, she ran as fast as she could.
Annis was leaving. She was giving up the only thing that mattered to her to atone for her lie. To help the people she loved so much. Sigurd had lied more times than Rurik could count, but he had lied only for his selfish gain. To gain Saorla. To gain wealth. To gain power. Never, to Rurik’s knowledge, had he lied to protect anyone but himself. Annis had been willing to tell the truth, but not if that truth would bring potential harm to her people.
Their lies were not created equal. Rurik could not consider them with an equal level of contempt. Perhaps by treating them the same, he was being unfair. The realisation left him momentarily dazed. It only took a few heartbeats to come to his senses, but it was enough time for Annis to slip by him and out the door.
‘Annis!’ he called to her as he followed behind her, but the sound of his voice only seemed to make her run faster. The knowledge that she intended to lock him out spurred him on, his strides eating up the distance so that he reached her door as she was shutting it behind her.
‘Let me in, Annis.’ He shoved his foot between the door and frame just in time to keep it from shutting him out, but he couldn’t quite hold in a grunt as pain shot across his foot and up his ankle.
‘Go away!’ she cried, putting all her weight against the door. It was no use, because he had managed to wedge his shoulder into the opening and make it wider. She stumbled away in dismay, her eyes wet and miserable.
He forced the door closed behind him harder than he had intended. The harsh slam reverberated in the still room. ‘You will not leave in the morning or any other morning.’ By the gods, the very thought of her gone away from him for ever made him grow cold.
‘I cannot stay.’ She brought the back of her hand to her mouth as she sucked in a trembling breath, her chest heaving as she struggled to contain her obvious pain. ‘Rurik, please do not force that on me.’
Watching her and the physical manifestation of her hurt and sorrow play across her face made the nearly unbearable pressure that had been building inside him every day they were apart break open. It splintered inside him, leaving him shaken and weak. He walked towards her, but it became more of a stalking because she backed up with every step until she came up against the wall and could move no farther.
‘Consider it your punishment,’ he said, hardly recognising his own voice.
Anguish slashed across her features, but she was able to hold back more tears as she drew her chin up. ‘Think of the people who count on us. This is not in their best interest. I cannot stay here and cause conflict. I will not.’
Rurik put his hands to the wall on either side of her, leaning close. ‘You do not have a choice, Wife. You will stay here and let me love you every day for the rest of our lives.’ He did not realise how much he meant those words until they were hanging in the space between them.
Her eyes widened with hope which she quickly suppressed, sending a pang shooting through him. He cupped her jaw, his thumb tracing the ridge of her lower lip. ‘You see, I find that I cannot live without you.’
‘Rurik...do you mean...?’ Her voice trailed off as if afraid to hope.
‘I know now you didn’t mean for that to happen in Maerr. Not at first... I let my anger decide, but after the anger wore off, I knew. And still I couldn’t get past the betrayal that you had lied to me.’
‘I shouldn’t—’
He pressed his thumb to her lips to quiet her. ‘I understand why you did. If I’m being honest, I don’t know how I would have reacted had you told me before the wedding. I know that I wouldn’t have gone through with it. At least not right away.’
Against the pad of his thumb, she said, ‘If Jarl Eirik hadn’t been on his way...’
The corner of his mouth pulled upwards. ‘If he hadn’t been on his way, there would have been no need for us to wed in such haste. I can’t forget that, or how glad I am that we wed.’
‘Do you mean
