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She shook her head disapprovingly.
“You’re sullen, too tall, and getting older every day. After that stunt you pulled with Massimo, you’re not even good enough for what I’m offering you.” Her green eyes crackled. “If you’re anywhere near as smart as you should be, you will listen to me for once in your life and you will take it.”
31
FALLON
Between using the hose to fill a bucket (presumably that same bucket Silar had told me about at my wedding) with water for Kolt, and the windows and doors of the warden’s station being closed, I did not hear much from inside, even with my good ears.
Until Darcy’s voice suddenly rose to a shout, carrying through the wood and the glass.
“But I never wanted to be a wife! I never even wanted to get married!”
I froze. The warden’s gaze snapped to me. Before I could fully absorb what she’d just said, her mother’s voice also became louder, audible for the first time.
“And what else would you have been good for, if not making a decent marriage match? You’ve never exhibited any other particular skills or talents. You never had any real interests. God knows it was hard enough to teach you even the most basic domestic duties.”
Those words were a spark to the dry tinder of my barely buried rage. Before I even knew what I was doing, I was moving.
“Fallon!” the warden called, but I was already striding, then running, around to the front of the house. Darcy said she wanted to do this on her own, and I’d tried to respect that.
But nobody insulted my wife in my earshot and got away with it.
I yanked open the door to the warden’s station and stormed in, not stopping until I’d reached Darcy’s side. My tail went ’round her waist.
“I do not care who you are,” I told the pale-haired human woman before me. “I do not care if you are Darcy’s mother. I do not care if you’re the warden.”
Somewhere behind me, I heard the warden sigh. But I ignored him, plunging onwards.
“I do not care if you are the Emperor of Zabria himself! No one comes here and speaks to my wife that way. No. One.”
“Fallon,” Darcy whispered. “It’s alright. I-”
“It is not alright!” I thundered in response. “You are perfect, Darcy. Precious.” I faced her foul mother once more. “You say Darcy is not good enough? I say that you’re a fool.”
Darcy gasped.
“My wife is kind. She is competent. She is loyal and protective. She cares immensely for her friends, for animals. She would put herself in danger to help them and she has done so. She is the bravest person I have ever known.”
I remembered Darcy charging out into that storm-soaked night to find Sora and the calf, nearly drowning or dying of cold in the process, and could barely see or hear for a moment. I took a ragged breath.
“Every day,” I seethed, as if my very soul were seeping out from between my teeth, “I thank the sun for rising just so it can shine upon her. Simply to breathe the air beside her is something that I treasure and fight every moment to deserve. I do not care if you do not respect me. But you will respect my wife.”
Darcy’s mother’s eyes got huge, her face going pale.
“Who are you to speak to me this way?” she gasped. “I am her mother!”
“And I am her husband,” I growled. “Her partner. Her protector. And if I have to protect her from you, then so be it.”
“Fallon. It’s alright,” Darcy said again, softly. She patted my arm, just once, before speaking to her mother.
“Fallon is the best person I have ever known,” she said with a cool, regal calm I wished that I could emulate.
But I supposed I just could not remain calm where my wife was concerned.
“He is ten, no, a hundred times the man anyone you could have picked for me is. Maybe I never wanted to just be somebody’s wife,” she repeated, in an echo of her earlier phrase. Pain started to move through me, until she grasped my hand and squeezed. “But now, I want to be Fallon’s.”
“I don’t care what you want!” her mother cried shrilly.
