Chapter 151

Merrick’s POV

I moved towards her, but she was already moving backwards.

A deliberate step first. Then another. The withdrawal of someone putting distance between themselves and a thing that had hurt them.

"Agnes..."

She shook her head.

I reached out.

She took another step back, and the quality of it - the way her body angled away from my hand, the involuntary recoil of it - hit me somewhere hard.

"Just listen to me for a moment..."

She turned and went for the door.

I went after her.

She was fast, but I followed with the same speed. There was no way on earth I was letting her get away from me due to a misunderstanding.

She went toward the stairs, and I eventually caught her at the top of them.

I quickly grabbed her wrist, stopping her from running further, and she went very still.

"We need to talk," I said.

"Let go of me."

"Agnes..."

"Let go..."

"Just five minutes," I said. "That’s all. After that, if you want to walk away, I won’t stop you."

She didn’t answer.

I drew her toward the nearest door - a small room, a bedroom, and I closed it behind us and I turned to face her.

She pulled her wrist from my grip the moment the door was shut, like she was trying to reclaim what belonged to her.

"You know what I was doing in there," I said. "You know who I was being. You know that isn’t me. You know who I am"

"I know," she said.

"Then why..."

"Because I was there." The words came out with pain. "I was there, on that hill. I watched it happen. I heard..." She stopped. Her jaw worked against whatever was trying to come through it. "I can still hear them. At night. When I’m trying to sleep. I hear the sounds people make when they’re burning alive and they can’t... when there’s no way out and there’s nothing..."

She pressed her hand to her mouth.

The tears were there, and they were coming out now. Helplessly.

"My husband," she said. "My parents. I couldn’t..." She was shaking. "I couldn’t go back for them. I ran. I had the baby and I ran and I never..."

"Agnes."

"And then you stand there and say it like it was nothing, like burning people down to nothing was just something you said, just words, just a threat, and I know you didn’t mean it, I know that, but for one second I heard it and I was back on that hill and..."

I crossed the room and put my arms around her.

She didn’t fight it.

That was the thing that told me everything. She simply went into my arms without fighting it, and that told me more about where she was in this moment than anything she had said.

"I’m sorry," I said. Into her hair. "I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you were there." I held her closer. "If I had known - I never would have said it. Never."

She was crying into my chest now, with the same quiet way she had used in the inn room, the kind she thought no one could hear.

I could hear it.

I always heard it.

"I’m not going to let anything hurt you," I said. "Not ever again. Not you and not that boy." I felt her breath hitch against me. "I promise you that. Whatever I have to do - wherever you go - I promise you."

She cried.

I held her and I said nothing else because there was nothing else that was more important than this - her weight against me, the realness of another person who had survived something enormous and was, in this moment, allowing themselves to not be entirely alone in it.

My wolf, which had been restless for the last several minutes, chose this moment to make its preferences known.

The need to have her right there was so intense that it had no interest in being managed.

I held her closer instead.

Used the holding as the management.

Not like this, I told the wolf firmly. Not in a moment of grief. That’s not what this is.

The wolf had opinions about this that it communicated at length.

I didn’t move.

And then she pulled back.

She moved out of my arms, and she looked up at me - her eyes wet, her expression with all the defenses temporarily suspended.

She looked at me like she was asking something she couldn’t ask.

The last of whatever had been restraining me gave way.

My hand found the back of her neck - slowly, giving her every fraction of a second to stop me - and I lowered my face to hers.

I tasted tears first.

Salt and grief and the warmth of her, and I took my time with it. I kissed the tears away with the kind of attention I would give to anything precious. Anything rare.

Then I tried to kiss her properly.

Her hands came up to my chest.

Not pushing me away, just resting there.

"I can’t," she said.

The words were barely above a whisper.

"Agnes..."

"My sister." She looked at me. The longing in her eyes was real - I was not misreading it, I had never misread her, the thing between us was not a misreading - but so was the grief of what she was saying. "I can’t do this to Angel." She stepped back. "I can’t."

Then she moved away.

The door opened and closed, and she was gone, and I stood in the middle of the small room with her tear-taste on my mouth and the wolf in my chest pushing me to go after her and drag her back here.

I stood there for a while.

Then I went to the bed in the corner of the room, and I lay down on it and I looked at the ceiling.

The ceiling was not helpful.

I put my arm over my face.

Do it right, I told myself. Do it properly. Whatever this is - whatever she is - she deserves it done right.

Which meant not a stolen moment in an inn, or a bedroom. Not while she was crying.

It meant a conversation.

A real one.

With Angel first, probably. Or Terrell - If he ever leaves that bedchamber.

Agnes’s POV

I didn’t stop moving, didn’t look back until I was safely behind the door of Angel’s room.

I stood in the center of the room and I breathed.

In. Out. Trying to reclaim my rhythm and calm my racing heart.

I looked at my son, lying in the cradle the maid had provided last night, sleeping so peacefully. And I still couldn’t believe he was here. He was real. He was safe.

But we had to leave.

I had to leave before I committed the worst kind of betrayal against the only family I had left.

I sat on the edge of the bed.

I pressed my hands flat on my knees and looked at the sleeping boy and I thought about Merrick.

Which was the problem.

He had been there from the beginning - from the very moment I stepped foot inside this castle. The storeroom floor. The horse ride, the questions, the way he answered without flinching when I asked about guard rotations. The search for my son and the thing he had done when we finally found him.

And his eyes.

The way he looked at me.

I had fallen for him.

Completely and totally and at some point I had stopped being able to identify exactly when it had happened because it had been happening gradually since the day we first crossed paths.

The thing was - I had known that speech in the throne room was theater. I had known it before the words were finished leaving his mouth.

But I had wanted it to be real.

I had stood behind that pillar with my heart in my throat hoping that the words were true. That he was capable of them. That the man I was not supposed to have feelings for was just another version of his brother. Just another thing that burned and left nothing.

Because if he was that, then I could hate him.

And if I could hate him, I could stop this feeling.

But he was not that.

He was simply my sister’s husband.

Her husband. The man she had been given to, bonded to, the second of the two that made up her impossible marriage. I had spent an entire journey telling myself that it didn’t matter, that the feeling was manageable, that proximity and gratitude could account for all of it.

He had kissed away my tears.

I pressed my hands harder against my knees.

Stop it.

I needed money. That was the most practical thought right now. I needed enough money to go somewhere far - somewhere that was away, somewhere that no one would know us. Where me and Aiden could build something small and quiet that belonged only to us.

Terrell.

It had to be Terrell - I knew that with the same clarity that told me I couldn’t face Merrick again without the feelings showing in a way I would not be able to contain. Terrell owed me something. Several things. He knew it and I knew it. I could go to him, I could ask for money, and I could take what I needed and leave before anyone had the opportunity to complicate it.

Before Merrick had another opportunity to stand close to me in a quiet room and make impossible things feel possible.

I stood up, looked at Aiden one more time, and I turned toward the door.

Find Terrell, I thought. Get what you need.

Then go.

Before your heart decides for you.