All's Fair in Revenge

Present

One Hour

It takes Cian an hour of arm-folded pacing before he starts at it again. He'll walk the perimeter of his cell—a short stroll—pause, glare at me, then continue on his way. I'm convinced he's had an entire argument with me in his own mind before he says a single word.

"I'm pissed," he says, then corrects himself, "No, I'm beyond pissed. I'm irate." With so much time to mull it over, I would've thought him be better prepared.

I removed the sharpened slate shard I chipped off the floor earlier from the lock in the iron gate. "That much is obvious."

"How can you be so indifferent? You speak of broken trust, of betrayal, of revenge all the while committing similar, if not the same, infractions. Yet when you do it, it's intrepid, valiant even." He accentuates each point with a gesture of his hands. "You killed Wickham; an ass but an innocent one as it may be. Does his daughter not have the right to seek you out as you did him?"

"He had a daughter?"

"You purport regicide as a necessary evil to protect your realm, but when it's your mother, it's heinous."

"She's my mother! Would you not feel the same?"

"If you knew my mother, you would not bother to ask. But that's my point, you don't ask. You're absorbed in revenge, I knew that, but you're absorbed in yourself, too. It's easier for you to shroud yourself in pity than stop for even a moment to look about the room. To see what's in front of you. I've been in front of you. I stand in front of you, Hana."

My eyes slit into narrow accusations. "And behind me. With a blade."

"For the love of Eyr," he drags his hands over his face, lingering at his rough chin, "I wish to ascribe every problem between us as miscommunication, but at such a point I must call it what it is, willful ignorance. On your part. Would you use that goddessdamned brain of yours for something other than retaliation you might conclude that perhaps not everything is as it appears. Perhaps you're trusting the information of an enemy, not a friend, you seek the veil but not the curtain."

"Perhaps," I say, enunciating each syllable, "it'd be easier if the man responsible for it all spoke candidly rather than in allusion."

"You want candor? Have it." Cian runs his hand through his hair then drops it defeatedly to his side, "In vain, I have tried to renounce your incessant ability to aggravate me, your inability to control your impulses, and the attraction of your sarcasm and wit, only to conclude that I cannot. Despite my best interests, I love you, Hana. I love your ferocity, your feral disposition. I love your fight and conviction. I love your heart and loyalty to those it protects. Gods be damned, I have loved you since the moment you barged into my life and through no fault of your own, I will continue to be dangerously, destructively, unequivocally in love with you. Gods damn me for it." He lets a shaky breath out. "But I do not love how you allow your anger to blind you from the truth. I do not love that you'd rather be lonely than vulnerable. And I do not love that I see you, all of you, when you seek out only the worst parts of me."

Under me, my leg shakes. I try to hide the sniffle that escapes and the tears that line my lashes. My jaw feels loose, and I stretch it at odd angles as if it might allow for more air. "Pretty words," I admit after some time. "Words that serve no purpose except to give me whiplash. If you wished to offend me by lamenting on all the reasons why you ought not to like me, that you do so against your will and logic, you've succeeded. Had I not decided one way or the other against you after learning your true past, did you think this insulting declaration would entice me? In what world would I ever forgive the man who has ruined me and my family? For that, and so many other reasons, I do not love you Cian Thorne." I take a shuttering breath of my own. "I will never love you."