“In case love has blinded you,”—he scanned the room with exaggeration—“William is currently not home, but is in front of the Council as we speak making yet another plea to be granted permission to marry the girl of his dreams, while I’m stuck here trying to train her.” He retrieved my clothes from the floor and chucked them at me. “Both rather impossible endeavors if you ask me.”
I pulled at the pants that had landed on my head and tossed them aside. Despite the smile he’d said it with, Patrick’s comment struck a nerve. “It is impossible, isn’t it?” I whispered, verbalizing what I’d known all along. “There really isn’t a hope in the world we’ll ever be allowed to be together.” I covered my eyes before he could see the tears forming.
With a rush of air, he was beside me, tugging my hands from my face. “I’m an idiot, the insufferable, malignant kind. I’m sorry.” He lowered his head to look into my eyes. “There’s always hope as long as you keep fighting. Never forget that, Bryn.”
The distant clap of thunder rumbled through the room, foretelling of a summer storm approaching. “When it comes to a fight, there isn’t anyone I’d rather have in my corner than William.” Patrick’s voice boomed above the echo of thunder. “He’ll never give up. Don’t you give up.”
I paused before responding, not able to stop the barrage of my deepest fears coming to mind. “What if one day he wakes up and decides he’s tired of fighting and that I’m not really worth it in the end? Maybe he’d rather live in peace with another woman than with me in a constant state of chaos.”
Patrick leaned away from me. “I really can’t believe you’re saying that. It makes me sick to my stomach.” He burst up from the bed and walked to the opposite side of the room, as if putting as much distance between me as possible. “How could you even let that enter your comprehension when my brother was on some fool’s mission for two hundred years looking for some woman from his dreams? How can you sit here and doubt, even in the slightest, his devotion to you?”
“I don’t doubt him,”—he raised his eyebrows, so I continued—“but sometimes it’s hard to understand why he fights so hard,” I explained, lowering my eyes. “For someone like me.”
“For someone like you,” he repeated, before chuckling. “I think you’re the one with delusions if you can’t understand why my brother would go to the ends of the world for you or why you’ve caught the eye of more than one love-struck lad in our Alliance.”
I sighed, glad that Patrick’s outburst had been extinguished as quickly as it’d burst to life. “Enlighten me.”
He shrugged, wandering back to the side of the bed. “You’re special.”
“I’m special?” I repeated, not buying it.
“More than you know.” A hint of pink spotted his cheeks. “Just don’t forget—as long as you both keep fighting, there’s hope.”
I nudged him. “You’re a lot smarter than you look.”
His hand curled around an imaginary dagger, pulling it from his heart with as much theatricality as a Shakespearean actor. “If I didn’t know you were head-over-heels mad for my brother, I’d think all the teasing and cold shoulder turning I get from you stems from a secret crush you have on me.”
I could have choked, but decided to play the overdramatic role with him. “That’s it! You’ve uncovered the truth at last. Why would I want William when I can have you?” I made it a point of looking him up and down, trying to look unimpressed, but everything about Patrick’s finely tuned exterior made my work of looking disgusted a failed attempt. “Nice work, Sherlock.”
His smile didn’t falter, but something in his eyes did. “See. That’s just it. You’re an open book. You don’t hide your feelings, which is admirable, but it’s obvious to everyone what your weak spot is. And when people know your weak spot, especially your enemies, they can use it against you.”
I didn’t need to ask him what weak spot he was referring to. I only had one and it hung like a target with flashing strobes over my heart. “Sorry, that was mean. You’re going to make someone very happy one day,” I offered, not able to comment on the topic he’d slapped in my face. “It’s just there’s never been anyone but William. I’ve never looked at you, or anyone for that matter, in that way.”
He waved my apology away. “Let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that I was the last male on earth and you were the last female—”
“Not a chance,” I interrupted, trying not to cringe from the image of Patrick and me wrapped around each other in whatever post-apocalyptic world he’d drummed up in his twisted imagination.
“If your life depended on it?” he pressed.
“Not even close.” I did an internal humming in an attempt to drown out the images flying through it.
“My life depended on it?” His face hung in the balance, waiting to form around my answer.
“Sorry, Charlie. Besides you’ve lived a long, full life.”
His eyes narrowed for an instant, before they widened to their capacity. “His life depended on it?”
He had me and he knew it. I glared my response.
“You’ve got a weak spot the size of Rhode Island,” he said, grinning from his victory.