Chapter 142: RIGHT FEELINGS, WRONG TIMING
AMARIS
"I think I’m falling for you, Amaris."
His hands were still on my face from the kiss and I stood there in the small space between us not moving, not breathing properly, his thumbs against my jaw and his eyes on mine and those words felt like I could almost touch them.
I stepped back slowly.
His hands dropped.
"Why are you telling me this now?"
"Because it’s true." He said it like it was simple.
"That is not an answer." I turned away from him, crossed to the window, stood there with my back to him because looking at his face while I said what I needed to say was not something I was capable of right now.
"Say the word." His voice came from right behind me, closer than I expected. "Say it and I will get you out of here. Tonight. Right now. Away from all of this."
I closed my eyes.
Then I turned around to face him.
"I don’t trust it, Ryker."
His jaw tightened. "Amaris—"
"Whatever you feel for me is inside everything you feel about your father." My voice was doing fine, holding steady, I just had to keep it there.
"Your wanting me and your wanting to hurt him are the same thing and you can’t see that because you are standing too close to it."
He crossed the room in two steps and took my face in his hands again, not roughly, just holding it, tilting it up, his eyes searching mine. "Look at me and tell me what I feel right now is about him."
I looked at him. This time hoping I could see more than the hatred and love tangled all in one.
That was the problem.
I looked at him and I could see it, whatever it was, sitting right there in his face unguarded in a way he almost never let himself be, and it would have been so easy to believe it.
"You are the most volatile person I have ever met," I muttered quietly, with his hands still on my face. "And I would spend every day I had with you waiting to find out which version of you showed up. Whether any of it was actually about me."
"It is about you." His thumbs moved slightly against my jaw, the gentlest thing he had ever done.
"Then why now." My voice cracked down the middle and I watched him feel it. "Not weeks ago. Not any of the mornings before this one. Today. In the morning I walk down to your father."
I reached up and took his wrists, not pulling his hands away, just holding them there. "Do you understand what this looks like from where I am standing? Do you actually understand that."
His hands tensed under mine.
"You can call it real." I let go of his wrists and stepped back, and this time he let me. "But the timing makes it something I can’t hold onto. Even if I wanted to."
"Amaris."
"I wanted to." My voice broke fully on that and I let it because fighting it was taking energy I didn’t have. "That’s the part I needed you to know. I wanted to."
I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth briefly, pulled it away. "But you need to leave."
He stood there looking at me and the expression on his face was one I was going to carry for a long time, the jaw tight, the eyes dark cracked open underneath all of it that he didn’t know how to close.
He nodded once, almost like he knew there was nothing more he could do and walked to the door.
The click of it shutting behind him was the loneliest sound I had heard in a long time.
I stood in the middle of the room for a moment and then I sat down on the floor right where I was because my legs had been holding that conversation with me and they were done.
I cried. The tears I had been holding since last night, since the courtyard, since I woke up this morning and remembered. Not composed or quiet, the tears where your whole face gave up entirely and you sat on the floor of a room that didn’t belong to you and fell apart because there was no one there to see it and nowhere to put any of it.
I did feel something for him.
I knew it and I had known it and I sent him away anyway because I was right to, and being right had never once in my experience made anything hurt less.
I got up eventually after minutes or hours, I couldn’t tell.
Went to the bathroom. Ran the cold tap and pressed both palms to my face and stood there until my chest settled and my eyes stopped burning.
"Get it together," I told myself.
I went back into the room.
The dress was on the wardrobe door, still in its cloth covering. I unzipped it and stepped back.
Deep ivory, nearly gold, with a fitted bodice that sat off both shoulders and fell into a full skirt in heavy silk, a layer of fine lace over the top, gold thread worked through it in a pattern of tiny flowers and trailing vines from the cinched waist to the hem. The embroidery was so fine it looked like it had grown there. The outermost layer was sheer enough that the silk underneath glowed through it when the light caught it.
It was the most beautiful dress I had ever seen in my life.
I put it on.
I did my hair myself, standing at the mirror, working through it with just my hands the way Nia had taught me, pinning it up and leaving a few pieces loose. I did it slowly because I had no one waiting on me and no one to talk to while I did it.
Nia should be here.
She would have been on that bed. She would have squinted at the dress and said something like that neckline is doing the absolute most and I would have laughed before I could stop myself. That one laugh. She always found it right before I needed it most.
She wasn’t here.
Gone since yesterday and nobody in this pack was looking for her the way they should be, and I had no way to reach her and no idea where she was and tonight was still tonight.
I finished my hair.
Straightened the skirt. Ran my palms down the silk once.
I stood in front of the mirror and the woman in it had her hair up and a dress that cost more than anything she had ever owned and eyes still red at the rims.
She looked like someone’s Luna.
The knock came.
Beta Marco stood in the hallway in formal attire, back straight, chin up.
"It’s time."
I nodded and reached for my wrap.
"What about Freya?"
His whole body went rigid.
I stepped into the doorway and watched his face. "Marco." My voice dropped. "Please. Just tell me."
He stared past my shoulder for a moment. A long one.
Then his eyes came to mine.
"She’s in the dungeon. I just brought her in."
