Total pages in book: 208
Estimated words: 209645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1048(@200wpm)___ 839(@250wpm)___ 699(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1048(@200wpm)___ 839(@250wpm)___ 699(@300wpm)
“My wife—”
“Though, once you’re rid of me, if you allow me to take another husband, I suppose I’ll have another wedding night.”
“Do not speak thus,” he growled.
She fell silent.
“I lashed out. I regret it. I admitted that. And now you do have a choice,” he informed her. “It is your choice if we again grow apart or if we move on together. But I warn you, don’t allow your pride to make that decision.”
“But don’t you see?” she asked. “I have nothing. Pride, as empty as it is, is the only thing I possess.”
Aramus growled again, this time with no words, as he stared through the dark at her curls on the pillow.
“I would thank you not to touch me,” she declared.
“I would get used to me touching you, wife,” he ground out. “For I will use touch, and any other manner at my disposal to win you again.”
“Against my will?”
“It will not be against your will. You cannot be falling in love with a man of a morning and in that same morning stop doing this very thing.”
“Yes, Aramus,” she said quietly. “Yes, you can.”
By Triton, she was right.
He’d made that so.
He could not go back there, to that morn, remember the words that came out of his mouth, the words that came from hers telling him he’d been earning her love, but he had put an end to that.
And he could not bear to remember the look on her face.
Instead, he did what he’d desired to do time and again since the first time he laid eyes on her.
He buried his face in her abundance of soft curls.
“I will miss my man,” he told her.
“And I feel badly for you.”
“Do not make me lose a man and my wife on the same day.”
“It was not your doing, the loss of Catedrais. The other…”
She did not finish her statement.
It was still clear.
“I can only share my regret, what else would you have of me?” he asked.
“This is our problem.”
He slid his head back to listen, closely, but she did not go on.
“What is our problem?” he prompted.
“Words, they have awesome power. Awesome power to wound. However, sadly, once that is done, they lose their power if you attempt to use them to heal.”
Aramus wished this wasn’t true, but he feared it was.
His wife was not finished speaking.
“It is worse. Worse for us. For you don’t understand. It’s impossible for you to understand. To understand who I am and how I am and what means something to me and why. To understand what has made me and how. To understand how your words would so thoroughly kill what was budding between us.”
“Make me understand.”
“It’s impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible, Ha-Lah.”
Suddenly, she whispered, “I need the sea.”
“We will leave tomorrow. We will take the fastest route. We will wade in the shores. You will swim with the dolphins. We will meet the others later or not at all. They can battle this Beast. We will return to Mar-el and reign side by side.”
She shook her head on her pillow.
“Please, talk to me, my Ha-Lah,” he pleaded.
“My father grieves my mother still,” she said.
“You’ve shared this with me,” Aramus replied.
“Every man in the village wanted her as his wife. Wanted to put babies in her belly. Wanted to live his life at her side.”
Aramus remained quiet and listened.
“My auntie, she said all the women thought it was because she was so beautiful. ‘But really,’ she told me, ‘she was. Though it was a beauty you could not see.’”
“So she was kind,” Aramus guessed.
“And lively. And amusing,” Ha-Lah added.
“She has given you this.”
Her head moved on the pillow again, negatively. “No. My father says I’m too serious. He says if I were a man, I’d take up a sword and be a crusader. It wouldn’t matter what cause. I just need a crusade.”
From what Aramus knew of his wife, he could not dispute this.
“He won her,” she said so low, Aramus barely heard her.
“He won her?” he asked to make certain that was what she said.
“Auntie Ha-Zahlah told me that if Momma told my father, to win her heart, he had to travel into the night sky and bring back a star, he would have found a way. And somehow, he found his way to prove this to her.”
It was at that, Aramus’s body went solid.
“He grieves her still,” she whispered.
“I will bring you a star,” he whispered back.
“You do not wish to win me, Aramus. You want a queen. A wife to give you sons. And the partner who will help all defeat the Beast. You regret your words because it takes you further from these goals. You do not regret your words because they harmed me.”
“You are very wrong,” he stated firmly.
She sighed. “You will never understand.”
“You’re correct,” he agreed, and finished, “if you don’t explain it to me.”