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But what about my mom? Tick tock.
What if I bumped into berserkers on my journey home? Talk about trouble. Unless I had the mark.
Should I set out for the unknown without it? And, really, it wasn’t like the mark would be on me, but his wife. Whom he didn’t even like. Me, however, he enjoyed. Wouldn’t the true betrayal be forcing him to mark the body with the real Isobel abiding in it? And did she truly deserve to experience it with the husband she had betrayed over and over?
After everything Callen and I had been through, we deserved to have our moment.
Excitement mixed with nervousness. Yes. I was gonna do it. I would take the mark. Decision made. No backing out. I would even take care of business with Isobel first so nothing distracted me from the act. In fact, I’d send her a photo of gold coins. That should buy me more time.
Feeling lighter, I headed for the ballroom. “No!” I exclaimed, coming to a halt just past the doors. My gifts. They were gone. Nothing remained but the faint trace of sage in the air.
Disappointment and frustration converged. But okay. All right. Callen must have ordered someone to move everything out of the way. In the morning, I’d ask around. For now, I sent Isobel a text:
You’ll get your money. I’m making arrangements.
I hoped she responded as I ascended the stairs. Alas.
My sweet Thora trotted past me with her nose in the air, acting as if I wasn’t standing right there. “What’d I do this time?” I asked.
She disappeared inside a sitting room, and I sighed. Another task for later. Soothing my dog.
Knees knocking, I made my way to the primary bedroom. Would Callen sweep me into his arms the moment I entered? Did I want him to?
I think…I did.
Breathless now, I opened the door. The block closed with a soft snick. There was Callen, in profile, sitting in the leather recliner near the unlit hearth. A glass of iced whiskey in hand, he stared at nothing.
“Did you love him?” The harshly statedquestion filled the room, and there was no escaping it. He didn’t glance my way.
I didn’t have to ask who he meant. Him. Roderick. I shrank into myself.HadIsobel loved him? I still didn’t know. “Would you feel better or worse if I said yes?”
Callen gave a humorless laugh and drained the remaining contents in his glass, the ice clinking. “Probably both.”
I wrung my fingers together. What had caused this sudden sullenness? My seeming rejection of the mark? “Did you love Sorcha?”
“I loved what she represented.” He swirled the ice. “I’ve told myself you must have loved Roderick, even though you didna seem to mourn him. That you hid your sadness to protect yourself. That you aren’t a cold, heartless shrew, but a young woman terrified of the unknown. How else can I let myself forge a life with a disloyal mate who cost me the only brother I had left, then saddled me with years of misery and challenges? Because, if I canna control my firebrand, how can I lead warriors to victory?”
My shoulders snapped straight. “I don’t want to be controlled. And you don’t want to control me.” He craved his wife’s affections with the whole of his being. I’d suspected it when he’d placed the tiara on my head, but now my certainty solidified, unbreakable. He wanted her to want him of her own volition, because he longed for a future together.
Whether he’d realized it or not, he’d even planted seeds for that future. He could’ve handled me differently. Could’ve locked me up. Beaten me. Threatened me. Humiliated me. Insulted me. Broken me. Publicly rejected me. Then he would’ve had the illusion of control. From the verybeginning, he’d shown me the mercy he denied his enemies, giving me space to find my way.
“It doesn’t matter, I suppose,” he intoned, breaking the silence, “since I won’t be letting you go.”
An invisible hammer beat against my defenses. Cracks formed and tenderness leaked out. It felt as if he’d spoken the words to me, Elizabeth. I wondered…
Would he choose me when I switched back? Or would his affection shrivel beyond repair, taking his trust with it as soon as he discovered his wife’s willingness to steal the identity of an American schoolteacher simply to escape him?
Heart thudding, I stalked around his chair and knelt between his legs, peering up at him. “You shouldn’t want to keep someone who doesn’t want to be kept,” I rasped, trying to make him understand the crux of the problem without revealing my secret.
He flinched. “Ah, but the shame of doing so ismypunishment, isn’t it?”
I canted my head, deepening my study of him. “Why do you think you deserve punishment?” For rendering the killing blow to Roderick?
“When you’ve lived as long as I have, warred as much as I have, the reasons stack up.” A note of bitterness accompanied the words.
“People learn and change. Who I was isn’t who I am, and who I’ll become isn’t who I am now. The same is true of you.” What I wouldn’t give to talk to him openly and honestly, nothing held back. “Why should New Callen keep feeding Old Callen’s misery, keeping it alive?”
He set his glass on the floor, the corners of his lips curving down. “Whoareyou?”
