I don’t know how to take those words.
Because while they’re a threat, his hands are gentle.
“But I’m not here to hurt you,” he concedes, “and I’m not going to tell her, so stop looking at the knife.”
“Then why are you here?”
Edain stares at me for a long, heated second. “It sometimes amazes me how blind you truly are. In that, you’re your mother’s daughter. Adaia can’t see what’s right beneath her nose.”
I blink. “Fuck you.”
And he laughs. “Surely you can do better than that, Princess. Now sit the fuck down and let me see your wounds.”
I don’t want him touching me, but I have no choice. He captures my hips and lifts me onto the bench, and then he takes my knife and flips it until he captures the blade between his fingers before he slides it behind his belt.
Then his eyes dare me to do something about it.
Fine. I stare past him, at the wall. “What were you doing out in the woods?”
“Watching the game play out.” He ducks his head and curses under his breath as he examines my thigh. “You’re bleeding again. Don’t move.”
Watching the game play out…. It never occurred to me that Edain is the one I should be watching.
And once again he senses it as he swiftly cleans me up. “Try not to think too hard, Princess. You might strain a muscle.”
My eyes narrow. “I think I liked you better when you weren’t pretending to care for me.”
His laugh is soft and silky. “You’ve never liked me, Princess. Because I am the mirror to your soul.”
His dark hair falls into his eyes as he reaches around my thigh to bandage my wounds. The towel edges up. His breath shivers over my skin, and suddenly I realize I’ve never truly looked at him. Not the way I should have. Because it’s clear he’s been watching me, and while he’s unearthed a few of my secrets, I don’t know anything more about him than the peripheral.
All I know of him are shadows, shadows of the whole.
The reckless, petty, spoiled pet who whispers in my mother’s ear.
The dangerous, charming seducer.
But he’s not just a pretty fae male sprawled across a bed. He’s a sheathed knife. Threatening. Unpredictable. The kiss of steel against your bared throat when you barely realized it was there.
Looking at Edain this close, his dark features barely a breath away, feels dangerous in ways I’ve never noticed before.
Perhaps I could tear his mask off and see what lies beneath those chiseled, urbane edges.
Perhaps we both wear nothing but masks.
We stare at each other for long seconds.
“I know what it looks like in the mirror when you hate yourself,” he whispers. “You and I are two halves of a whole, Andraste.” His thumb settles on my knee, stroking back and forth. “And you can glue the pieces back together and forge them into a shield, but there are fault lines in every inch of you.”
I tense when his thumb moves higher, and he leans closer.
“You hate me,” he whispers, his breath caressing my lips. “I see it every time you look at me.”
“I don’t hate you.” It’s a rare moment of understanding. “I pity you.”
His thumb digs in a little, and his lashes half shield his eyes, but then he’s stroking me again. His thumb questing higher, a question mark against my thigh. “Would you still hate me if I loved you?”
And then his lips brush against mine, and it’s unbearably soft—even as his words knife through my heart.
Love.
Love is ruin. Love is pain. Love is loss.
Love is a lie.
And he mocks me with the sound of that word.
My nails dig into his forearms, but he laughs under his breath, and I can taste it. And then there’s no more pretense that this is anything more than lust as the kiss turns hotter and more dangerous.
The shock of it makes me gasp, and then his tongue lashes mine. Somehow, I have a fistful of his robe, knuckles grazing the silky skin of his chest, though whether I meant to push him away or pull him closer is unknown, even to me.
I didn’t think he’d do it.
And even now I tense in uncertainty.
If Mother caught us, she’d have both our heads.
There is no escape.
There is no hope.
There is only one lie after another, and my mother never knows. She never looks at me—her trusted daughter—the daughter that would never betray her, and ever suspects….
But I’m not the perfect daughter. I’ve never been the perfect daughter.
And the two of us are trapped in her net, desperately trying to keep our heads above the maelstrom that is my mother.
Just this once, I want to betray her.
My teeth sink into Edain’s lip, and then I’m pushing against him, the kiss turning deep and hungry. He senses everything I won’t say.
Make it all go away.
And he does.
And gods, I can’t breathe again, but this time it’s for another reason entirely. This time I feel too much. He kisses me as if we’re both trying to lose ourselves in each other, the slick slide of his tongue a lash against mine. His thumb digs into my uninjured thigh, inching higher.
“Make it hurt,” I beg.
Make me feel.
He pushes away, both of us reeling a little and breathing hard.
We stare at each other.
The line that once held me safe from his advances has been crossed. Obliterated. And he did it deliberately.
Resting on his knuckles, he stares into my eyes as if he’s trying to see through my soul. And then he laughs under his breath and shakes his head before he steps away. “No.”
No?
“What do you mean?”
Edain turns around, the simple linen of his shirt clinging to his shoulders. “I mean no. I won’t be the tool you can use to make yourself bleed again.” Wiping a hand over his lips, he licks his fingers as if he can still taste me. “Kiss me when you want it to stop hurting, Princess, and I might think
