The Door He Left Open

I found Lucien in the chair beside the window, angry enough to make the wolf pace.

"Rusk told you," I said.

"Rusk told me Mercer looked at your throat. I supplied the rest."

I touched the faint crescent beneath my collar.

"Did you know that would happen?"

"I knew it could. I did not know our connection was strong enough."

I sat across from him.

He watched me with an attention that had become familiar, almost comforting. Almost.

Derek's realization had opened another question I had been avoiding.

"How long have you been hearing me?"

Lucien went still.

"Not continuously."

"That is not what I asked."

He rested his hands on the chair arms.

"Since the first morning. Your voice reached me before I could open my eyes."

I thought of everything I had said beside the bed. My fear of the documents. My loneliness. The foolish, aching confession one evening that I did not know why anyone would choose me after Derek had made it seem so difficult.

"You knew I was telling the truth when I said you looked at me."

"Yes."

"And you let them tell me I imagined it."

His mouth tightened. "I could not stay awake long enough to contradict them."

"You could have told me afterward."

"I should have."

The simple admission left me nowhere easy to put my anger.

I stood and moved toward the hearth.

"What else did you hear?"

He did not answer quickly enough.

I turned.

"Lucien."

"I heard you ask whether a woman could be so easy to stop loving that she had failed to notice it happen."

My face burned.

I had said that in the dark, with his unconscious hand beside mine, because I thought there was no one to be ashamed in front of.

"You should not have kept that from me."

"I know."

I wrapped my arms around myself.

"Did you choose me because I could help you?"

He closed his eyes briefly.

When he opened them, he did not offer the answer I wanted.

"At first, I hoped you could. I recognized the locket. I felt what happened when my wolf approached yours. I was desperate enough to think of escape before I thought of what it might ask of you."

I swallowed.

The palace seemed suddenly enormous around us.

"So everyone wanted something."

He flinched.

I wished I had not seen it. I wished it made the question easier.

"Yes," he said. "But wanting to live is not all I want now."

He tried to rise. His knee gave, and he caught the chair arm.

I moved instinctively, then stopped when he shook his head.

He steadied himself and looked up at me.

"I want you to stop checking the doorway whenever you laugh. I want to know what you liked before you learned to accept whatever was left. I want to be the man you tell when you are angry, instead of the one you manage until it passes."

His voice roughened.

"And none of that gives me the right to keep you here."

He reached for a slim folder on the side table.

Inside were travel papers, an account in my name, and an order confirming that Owen's protection did not depend on my residence in the palace.

I read the last page twice.

"When did you arrange this?"

"After your father visited."

"You did not tell me."

"I wanted the account funded before I did. I wanted it to be something you could use, not another promise."

My fingers tightened on the folder.

"If I leave, you could get worse."

"Ives will continue treating me. Rusk will continue guarding me. You have done more than anyone had the right to ask."

He looked at the floor, then back at me.

"I will miss you. I would rather you knew that than imagine I am being noble because I do not care."

I could not answer.

For the first time in my life, leaving was a real possibility. Not a fantasy dependent on a man knocking at my window. A road, money, my brother safe beside me.

Lucien let me take the folder to my room.

He did not send for me that evening.

I ate with Owen. He told me Rusk had corrected his stance and said he might become a competent swordsman if he stopped apologizing to the practice dummy.

Then he noticed my silence.

"Do you want to go home?"

"Briar Hollow is not home anymore."

He considered that.

"I like it here. You smile more."

After he went to bed, I walked through the gallery with my travel papers in my hand.

I could leave. The knowledge made each step feel different.

When I reached Lucien's door, I knocked.

"Come in."

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, struggling with the cuff of a clean shirt. He looked up so quickly that the unguarded hope in his face nearly brought me to tears.

I set the folder on the table.

"I am keeping these."

He nodded once.

"Good."

"And I am staying."

His hands went still.

"You do not have to decide tonight."

"I have decided tonight. Tomorrow, I may decide that you are impossible, but I intend to tell you so over breakfast."

He laughed once, unsteadily.

I crossed the room and fastened his cuff. He watched my fingers, waiting.

"You hurt me," I said.

"I know."

"Do not make me find out what you want from someone else's mouth again."

"I will tell you. Even when I dislike what it makes me look like."

I bent and kissed him.

His hands settled at my waist, careful at first. Then I stepped between his knees and rested my forehead against his.

"I missed you today," I admitted.

He closed his eyes.

"I was afraid to ask whether you had."

That night, I slept in his bed, fully dressed beneath the blanket, my cheek against his shoulder. Nothing was required of me. No future was being negotiated.

Once, I woke to find him looking at me.

"Go to sleep," I whispered.

He kissed my forehead.

"I am beginning to remember how."

The next morning, a maid collected the scarf I had left over his chair. I noticed only because she folded it carefully beneath the laundry, away from the other clothes.

By afternoon, the scarf was missing from the inventory.