AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My chest grew so tight it nearly felt bruised. I pressed my forehead to Silar’s and buried my fingers in the thick warm silk of his hair. “I love you.”
“I love you,” he replied without hesitation. “I believe that I have loved you from the very first moment that I saw you through the window at the warden’s. I am sorry I did not say so before. I am sorry I did not say so many things.” He breathed out, a hot rush over my face. I revelled in the feel of it on my lips, my skin. “But I will do better,” he promised. “I will haul my heart up into my mouth for you, Cherry. Let you hear it. See it. Hold it in your hand. You’re the one who taught me I still have one.”
I nodded, my forehead rubbing against his with the motion.
“It doesn’t have to be tonight,” I said, “but one day, will you tell me what happened? When you were young…”
“You mean, about the man I killed?”
“Yeah.” I petted my fingers comfortingly against his scalp when he tensed. Slowly, like a wary animal approaching a hand outstretched with food, he relaxed.
“I will tell you now,” he said. “I do not want anything left unsaid between us tonight.”
And so, with my hands in his hair and his forehead against mine, he told me.
He told me about the man who invaded his family home back on Zabria, killing his mother when he was just a child. He told me about how he looped his tail around the man’s neck and squeezed until he died.
He told me how it wasn’t enough to save her.
“My father returned home not long after that,” Silar said. “Even as a child, I was very large and strong. It was the only way I was able to get my tail around the intruder’s neck and kill him. But even so, there was no hope of me moving the body on my own. My father discovered the scene and he immediately alerted the authorities.”
My hands paused their petting motions.
“Alerted the authorities…”
“He turned me in.”
“What?!” I half rose up onto my elbow. Surprisingly, Silar’s eyes didn’t even have a hint of white in them. Meanwhile, I was fuming. “Your own father turned you in?”
“Yes. And he testified as an Imperial witness against me at my trial.”
“I’m going to kill him,” I hissed before I realized I’d said it out loud.
Silar gave me a look that somehow managed to be both sad and amused.
“He died several cycles ago.”
“OK. Well. I didn’t actually mean literally. We don’t both need to be convicted murderers. But still! Jesus! Who does that?”
“A Zabrian,” Silar said, sounding unfazed. “My father did exactly as was expected of him. Exactly what our society and culture dictates. Had he tried to hide me, or protect me, it would have brought great shame upon him. He would have lost everything.”
“He did lose everything!” I exploded. “He lost you!”
Silar’s breath took on a charred, choked quality. His voice was thick when he spoke again.
“I do not think you know,” he rasped, “or that you could ever really know, just what it all meant to me tonight. What it meant when you refused to call the warden to turn me in. When you instead asked me if I had a shovel and then just as quickly said that you would help me use it.”
“Of course I’d help you!” I cried, tears biting in my throat. “I’d bury a body for you any day of the week, Silar. Hell, I’d bury a hundred of them. I love you!”
“I believe that my father loved me, too. At least in some small way. But love does not always equal loyalty.”
“Well, it does in this marriage,” I said, fusing my gaze to his. “And don’t you dare forget it!”
His mouth drifted against my forehead, my eyelid, my ear, the breath of his reply like a kiss.
“I will not.”
31
