“Ow.” Arthur laughed, looking down at his foot.
“Oh my God. I’m so sorry, Arthur.” I smiled sheepishly.
“Never mind, my dear. I imagine your centre of gravity has shifted slightly with the being you now grow inside you.”
I looked down at the gap between Arthur and I where our bodies remained apart because of my bump. “No, it’s just that I can’t really concentrate on the steps tonight.” I glanced over my shoulder. “I can feel David’s eyes on me.”
Arthur’s lips and brow crinkled as he looked over at his nephew, and the feeling, the energy of David, faded.
“Did he look away?”
“He did.”
“Thank you,” I said, exhaling the breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“I will talk to him about this, Amara. It won’t go unaddressed.”
“What won’t?”
“His behaviour toward you tonight.”
“It wasn’t that bad.” I shrugged.
“It was. He was cruel, Amara. And I’ve heard several people mutter the same thing.”
“You did?”
He nodded, tilting his head then as if listening to something. “If you can spare a moment, Jason wants to see you.”
“He does?”
“He’s waiting for you on the balcony.”
“Oh, I . . . I can’t. David will have him arrested if we keep seeing each other.”
“Worry not, my dear. I’ll distract David. You need to hear what Jason has to say.”
We circled the dance floor again, my feet finally obeying my brain, but I stayed quiet, wondering what Jason wanted. When we reached to doors to the balcony, Arthur made a cheeky turn and swept us out of the room, twirling me straight into Jason’s arms.
“All my prayers answered in one twirl,” Jase said, both arms gently wrapping me up.
I stood on my toes for a second and touched my nose to his. “I’m sorry about what happened before.”
“Don’t apologise for anything, Ara.” He kissed my nose. “David was the jerk.”
My heels touched the ground again and I turned to thank Arthur, but he was gone. “Where’d he—”
“He’s playing Distraction with the king.”
“How will he keep him away?”
“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that.” He tucked a curl behind my ear. “I need to talk to you about something.”
“What?”
“I can protect you,” he said, his eyes round and so dark with hope. “I could have legal right to step in when he’s mistreating you.”
“How?”
“Marry me.”
I laughed. “Jase—”
“Ara, the queen is allowed more than one husband. Make me your second. Let me protect you, love you, be there every time you’re hurt or sick.”
“You are now.”
“No. I get shut out—told I have no right to comfort you or make decisions for you. I am the one person here who cares more about you than myself, and I—”
“Jase, I know, okay,” I cut in, pressing my hand flat to his chest. “But I’m not marrying you just so you can be my bodyguard.”
“Do you think that’s the only reason I’m asking you?”
My smile copied his.
“Ara, that’s my convincing argument to make you say yes.”
I laughed through my nose again, wiping under it after.
“See, I love you even if you snot on yourself every time you laugh.”
This time I blew the laughter out through my lips, and stepped into him, slowly sliding both arms along his waist. “I said I didn’t want to love you, Jase, because I needed to make a decision. I needed to choose and commit to one guy, for once in my life. And I know it’s too late for David and I, but this is my commitment, whether he wants me or not. I won’t marry another while he’s still breathing, even if I legally can have two husbands.”
“I understand that.”
“See, I don’t think you do. I think you know that you and I make a much better couple and that you’re better for me in so many ways but, Jase—” I looked through the doors at David, distracted by a group of Lower House members. “You have so much heart and you’re so easy to love. And, David . . . he’s got a darker side that I worry for—that I don’t think anybody else in this world understands. I just feel like. . .” I looked at Jase again, moving my shoulders up once. “If I don’t love him, who will?”
Jase let out a hot breath across the night sky and twirled me gracefully into his arms, cradling my spine to his chest, both of us just watching the candlelight from inside flicker shadows around the garden below us. “You're going to be okay, you know.”
“How do you know?”
He pressed his lips to the top of my head, his warm breath making me hold mine. “Because I'm going to make sure of it.”
“And how will you do that?”
“One day, things will be different for us, Ara. I believe that somewhere out there under those stars is a future for us, and maybe it’s decades away into eternity, but I love you. I’ve loved you under the most insane conditions, and I won't ever give up hope for us.” He turned me to face him again. “Things are going to get worse before they get better, but I'm here, and I just need you to know that you’ll always have a home to come to in my heart, Ara. It belongs to you eternally.” He touched his chest. “Just hold onto that when things get dark.”
I nodded, standing on my toes as he pressed his lips to my head. “You’re a good man, Jase.”
“No. I'm the man who destroyed my brother. I'm not good, but I love you, and I’d die for you.”
“What is the meaning of this?” David roared, thrusting both doors open at once.
We broke apart, Jason tucking me safely behind him. “It’s not her fault, David.”
“I don’t care whose fault it is. She is to come inside at once.”
“We’re just talking. She—”
“Do not test the lengths I will go to to keep you and her apart, brother. I will—”
“It’s okay.” I patted Jason’s arm, stepping out from the shadows. The moonlight moved up from the ground, over my dress and lit my face, and the anger in David slowly simmered down. “I’ll go inside now.”
“You will do no such thing.” David rushed forward and grabbed my arm. “You’re to go to bed. Now.”
“But I’m not tired.”
“I don’t care.”
I tried to twist my wrist from his grip, searching everywhere for one of my Guard. But they were all distracted—even Falcon. “You can’t make me go if I don’t want to.”
“Try me.”
“I. . .” I studied my feet. “I’ll tell Arthur.”
“And what’s he going to do about it?”
I looked David right in the eye this time, pursing my lips, then said, “Try him.”
“What’s going on here?” Falcon cut in, wrapping my hips and drawing me away from David.
But David wouldn’t let go. In one tug, he yanked me back onto his side of the line.
Falcon’s hand fell onto the sword in his own belt. “Where are you taking her?”
“To bed,” David said coldly, then motioned to the guards by the door. “See that my brother makes it back to his room, and stays there.”
“Yes, Majesty.” They bowed, and the jig was up.
“Forget it, Ara,” Jason said with a dismissive headshake. “He’s not worth it.”
I nodded. Jase was right. We could sort this mess out tomorrow. Now wasn’t the time. “It’s okay, Falcon. I’m just gonna go to bed.”
“But you haven’t even eaten yet, you’ll—”
“She can grab an apple on the way out.” David turned and dragged me along behind him, snatching a red, shiny piece of fruit from a bowl as we hurried out the doors by the fireplace, the painted Lilith looking down on me like she found it all so amusing.
“What are you smiling at?” I asked her spitefully.
***
“I don’t like having to treat you like a child, Ara,” David said, pulling me up the stairs by my wrist. “But you can’t expect me to stand by and let you fraternise with the very man who ruined your marriage.”
“He didn’t ruin it, David. I did.”
David stopped walking and looked back down at me. The music lilting out from the doors of the Great Hall just in front of us carried all the joy and excitement of those still allowed in the room. I felt cold and empty and left out from where I stood now. “It takes two to tango,” he said coldly.
“Yes, but his reasons for “dancing” in the first place weren’t the same as mine.”
His brow slowly creased in the middle and he moved down a step so our eyes aligned. “What do you mean?”
I tried to wriggle free from his grip, but it tightened. “He wanted me to carry his child.”
“Why?” he asked, his voice cracking with confusion.
“Because then he could use the Dagger and kill Drake, and I would never have had to lose you.”
His grasp on my wrist loosened, but didn’t drop. “But the law doesn’t work that way.”
“I know. But we didn’t know that at the time, and—”
“That’s what he tried to tell me—that day in Eve’s room, wasn’t it?” He stepped closer, grabbing my other wrist, the apple tucked between his pinkie and his ring finger. “Ara, that’s what he wanted to say. He—”
“He realised then that he’d made a mistake. That even if he had got me pregnant, it still wouldn’t have saved you.”
He dropped both my wrists and took a step back, turning away with the back of his hand over his mouth. “But . . . he’s in love with you.”
“Yes. That’s why he chose to die and leave me with the only man I wanted.”
He looked at me then, but the hatred was still fierce in his eyes. “And what about you? You said you that your reasons for sleeping with him were different to his. What—”
“I won’t lie.” I clutched the edges of my dress, looking down. “I’ve lied enough to you, David. And—”
“Look at me when you speak,” he said, thrusting my chin up. Our eyes met and mine filled with tears, not ready to see him break all over again.
“The truth is, I laid with him because I wanted to save you. But at some point in . . . in that time, I realised I loved him too much to lose to him. And—”
He sighed and stepped away again.
“And then, I decided that I didn’t want to love him. And I was angry at myself for feeling anything for him. I thought—”