“That’s not true. That’s not you, Cat.”
“It is me. You called me self-sacrificing. You’re right. I am—for the people I love. It’ll get me killed. I know that. I accept that. What I don’t accept is dying for anyone else.”
He slices his head to the side. Stubborn man. “The Power Bid is here. War will come, whether we court it or not. Innocent people will suffer, and you won’t be able to stand it.”
I look at him in shock. Is that really what he thinks? How he sees me?
My heart starts beating too fast. In my mind, I see armies clashing. I see me in the center of a raging storm and bodies strewn around me. Suddenly, every last one of those bodies is my mother’s. Sable hair. Green eyes. A crown of Fisan pearls. My crown.
“No, Griffin, I…” I squeeze my eyes shut. She’s still there. She sits up and looks at me like I betrayed her.
I open my eyes again. This view is much better. “Andromeda is too powerful. She’ll win. She always wins, and when you’re dead, and it’s all my fault, I will never recover.” My voice breaks, and I inhale sharply, a fragile, reedy sound catching in the back of my throat.
Griffin understands this fear. It’s one I’ve shared with him—and yet he persists in not seeing our relationship for the death sentence it is. He gathers me close, smoothing his warm hand up my naked back. His fingers stop on my nape, locking me in place. “I’m hard to kill. And you won’t fail. You never fail.”
Pressing my lips together, I lean my forehead against his chest. Seeking comfort? Hiding, really. I already failed. I was fifteen. I stole back into my home, armed not only with a knife and my new invisibility and ability to steal magic—gifts from Poseidon’s Lake Oracle—but also with a soul-burning hatred after my sister’s brutal death. Mother was to blame for that, and for so many other things. It would have been so easy to take my revenge. She would never have seen me coming.
But when I found the cruel and mighty Alpha Fisa chewing her lip to blood, her eyes frenzied because she couldn’t find me… I couldn’t do it. I was weak and stupid because I thought, just maybe, Mother was acting like a normal person for once.
She didn’t love me, or miss me. Nothing as pure as that. But I was something to her, something more than just the Kingmaker. I didn’t know what. And I still don’t. But whatever it was stopped me, and then I hurt her in the only way I could. I ran.
Griffin takes my face in his hands, tilting it up, his grip light but firm enough to keep me from turning away. “Stop looking for things that could go wrong instead of finding things that will go right.”
I roll my eyes, huffing a little. “Great. An eternal optimist.”
Griffin squashes my cheeks until my lips pucker. “Am I going to have to kiss you into submission?”
I snort. Sort of. It’s hard with my face all mashed up. “Submission? When has that ever happened?”
He gives me the roguish half-smile that always makes my heart skip a beat. He winks, and I could swear I’m looking at a Fisan pirate. Something in my chest flutters.
“It was worth a try.” Sobering, Griffin lets go of my cheeks. “I know it’s hard for you to trust, and always has been, but you should have had more confidence in me. In us. You should never have left.”
Deep hurt underlies his carefully even tone. Griffin’s neutral voice always does strange and painful things to my heart.
“I walked across the courtyard to the barracks.” Apparently, the last place anyone thought to look for me.
Griffin levels his hard stare on me. “You shouldn’t have left.”
“You destroyed our bed and looked like you wanted to rip me limb from limb.”
He keeps staring. “You. Shouldn’t. Have. Left.”
I toss up my hands. “I thought you wanted me to go! I thought I had to. The castle is your home. Your right. Your legacy. I don’t belong there.”
“Don’t belong there?” Careful neutrality deserts him. His eyes flash gray fire.
Suddenly nervous, I shake my head. I think I just woke the slumbering Cyclops inside every man—his inner, primal monster.
“Well, if you’d agree to marry me, you bloody well would!”
Uh-oh. That’s the one. The colossal, one-eyed, battering ram of a warrior creature. Awake. And livid. “That hardly matters, considering everything else that’s going on.”
“Hardly matters?” Griffin demands. “It’ll matter when we have our first bastard!”
I wrinkle my nose. He’s really hung up on that.
“It’ll matter when we have realm functions, and I can’t claim you in any meaningful way.”
I shrug. I don’t give a Cyclops’s eye about my place in realm functions.
“It’ll matter when my sisters tell me they’re doing the same thing with some man because they worship you and hang on your every word.”
My lips thin. Responsibility rears its annoying head.
“It’ll matter if someone steals you, and I can’t tell my army we’re going to war for my wife!”
“No one’s going to steal me.”
“I stole you!”
“Stop roaring at me! I’m not deaf!”
Calm descends like a colossus falling on my head. Griffin goes utterly still, and yet he vibrates.
Trepidation skips along my spine. Our eyes meet, and his are like thunder before a storm.