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‘No,’ Elena said quietly but very firmly. ‘No, he didn’t.’
How strange that it was he who now felt defensive of the man he’d felt nothing but bitter anger towards for the past twenty years.
‘I killed my brother,’ he said harshly. ‘You don’t think he had a right to be angry with me for that?’
‘Not angrier than you were at yourself,’ she said, as if she knew. As if she knew exactly what it was to be responsible for the death of another person. A person he’d loved. As if she knew exactly the depth of his bitterness and his self-loathing, because that was still there, deep down inside him.
A morass of pain and grief and fury and hatred.
At himself.
The sense of suffocation increased, making it feel as if there were hands around his throat, choking him. Abruptly he couldn’t stand it.
He ripped his arm from her grip and strode out without a word.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ELENA STEPPED INTO the cool of the tiny Kalifos church that had only recently hosted Aristeidis’s funeral and would now be hosting her wedding.
She adjusted her bouquet of calla lilies, while the woman she’d hired to help her dress, apply her make-up and do her hair fussed around with her gown.
She would have had a bridesmaid if she could, but growing up on Kalifos, which had isolated her anyway, and then looking after Aristeidis had left her little time for cultivating friendships. She could have done the make-up and hair herself, but she’d wanted to indulge herself on her wedding day, so she had.
After a few more twitches of her dress and a quick touch to her veil, the woman gave her a smile then disappeared through the door into the church, to tell Atticus that she’d arrived.
Elena took a couple of breaths to calm the twisting anxiety in her gut and to ease the tight band of emotion that had closed around her chest.
She wished Aristeidis were here. She wished her long-dead family were here. She wished she were marrying a man who loved her and whom she loved.
But none of that was to be. She was marrying Atticus to fulfil Aristeidis’s last wish, and so she could stay in the home she loved, and to one day have the family of her own that she so longed for.
Not that you deserve to have that.
The doubt felt like a thorn sliding through her, but she ignored it, the way she always did. The wedding was happening and she would have all those other things too, irrespective of whether she deserved them or not. And she was grateful, that was what she was.
Her husband-to-be was beautiful and there was a lot of pleasure to be had in his bed. They hadn’t discussed living arrangements or anything, but she’d assumed that once they were married he’d be living elsewhere, while she stayed on Kalifos. He’d clearly have to visit on occasion so she could conceive the children Aristeidis had specified, but he wouldn’t otherwise impede her in any way. And she’d thought that she’d be happy with that.
Except...he was a difficult man, it was true, but she’d caught glimpses of another man beneath his hard shell. A man who’d dried her tears gently, then looked at her with shock and a fierce rush of emotion as he’d opened the box with the pin in it. Who’d then also given her a glimpse of the deep, sharp pain that lived inside him when he’d pulled his arm from her grip and had left the room so suddenly.
Behind the silk of her bodice, her heart ached. Both for the pain she’d seen in him and for the calm way he’d dried her tears. For how he’d put his hand over the pin she’d given him, as if he’d never had anything so precious, and told her that the symbol of Eleos was her.
She could still feel the echo of the shock that had caused her reverberating through her now. She’d had no idea that he’d even remembered the day he’d found her, let alone that she’d changed something in him. That she had been the reason he’d started his charity.
She’d had no idea that she’d represented hope for him.
The ache in her heart deepened into a bittersweet pain. Bitter that he’d been so despairing and yet so sweet that she’d helped him. She’d never helped anyone except Aristeidis before, and it mattered to her that the person she’d helped had been him. That she’d given him hope when he’d had none.
You can’t let this—him—mean anything to you.
She shouldn’t. He’d already told her that love wouldn’t be a part of this marriage, so getting further involved with him, letting him mean something to her, letting herself be vulnerable to him, would only be setting herself up for further pain.
But...he was clearly still tormented by the death of his brother—the brief flash of pain and rage in his eyes before he’d walked out the night before had been clear evidence of that—and that made her hurt for him. That made her want to help him, too.
Aristeidis had told her what had happened to Dorian, and he’d also told Elena that he ‘hadn’t handled it well’. An understatement, apparently.
The death of Dorian had fractured an already tenuous relationship, Aristeidis letting grief overwhelm him, causing him to alienate his youngest son, piling more salt onto what was already an open wound.
Atticus blamed himself for his brother’s death, that was obvious. He was already angry and his father had made things worse by blaming him too. Instead of helping them both grieve, Aristeidis had broken their relationship entirely. And he’d regretted it deeply.
