“That’s just it, Giles, I’m not your prince or your king, and you don’t need to fix me. I made that pact with Rumpel, it is my cross to bear. Yes, I liked you. And yes, I’ve wanted to sleep with you since the moment we met. But I had no ulterior motives, I didn’t ask Danika to come and rescue me. And how she thinks you possibly could is beyond me.”
“What was your deal with Rumpel, exactly?” he asked cutting her off.
Wetting her lips, she said, “That I could mate with no creature of Kingdom aside from a wolf shifter.”
He took a miniscule step in her direction. “I am not a creature of Kingdom.”
“You live here, you are a creature.”
Giles smile was wide. “Rumpel’s deals are absolute in their wording, so unintentionally or not, you provided yourself a loophole.”
“I wasn’t the one to come up with the wording, he was,” she reluctantly admitted. “Rumpel refused my deal three times before finally relenting and only on the premise that I use his wording precisely.”
“Huh, that is interesting.” Giles scratched his jaw, staring off into the distance as though he’d suddenly put two and two together.
“What’s interesting?”
“He did this on purpose. He knew.”
“Knew what?” She hugged her arms tighter to her chest, wishing she had the guts to just leave him. These past few weeks had been a mixture of misery and elation and if this was love she wanted no part of it. It was maddening and exhausting.
“Tell me, what were his conditions of your deal?”
“In return for killing me”—she snorted; gods, she’d been an ignorant fool to have struck such a bargain—“there would be a specified date and time in the future when a man would come for me.”
He shook his head. “But it’s impossible that he could have known the future. He’s never known it before. Rumpel only just discovered the possibility of the chalice a few weeks ago,” he murmured beneath his breath.
She tossed her hands up. “Nevertheless, that was the deal. Written and sealed in my blood.”
Suddenly he was looking at her differently, gazing at her with something akin to wonder in his eyes. It was a look that filled her with nerves.
“What?” she snapped.
“Nothing.” He blinked and shook his head as though coming back to himself.
Giving him a withering stare, she turned ready to sleep this night away. How could she have gone from such joyous highs to such rotten lows in the span of a few minutes? Life seemed utterly unfair sometimes, but she’d been a fool to even believe it could ever be otherwise for her. Even if only for a second. Reality was cruel and harsh. She’d made the deal; she’d live by its rules.
“Lilith, I am not of Kingdom,” he said.
“Giles,” she said on a sad sigh, her anger spent. Her heart was broken and bruised. If he was right, and she could mate with a demone and not incite the curse to react that was great. If they’d fallen in love. But she would not mate for pity, no matter how kindly meant the gesture might be.
Leaning in, she rubbed his cheek with her palm. “If I didn’t know what I know now I would have jumped at this chance, but worse than being stuck in a marriage with someone I don’t love is being bonded to someone who I do love and who does not feel the same back.”
“But it could happen.” He grabbed her wrist, but the words were half-hearted at best.
He was playing hero again. And she shouldn’t be surprised that he was—it was what Giles did. He saved people. He looked at helping others first, always putting himself last. It was why she’d fallen for him as she had.
But she deserved more than that. And so did he. She may never find her true love with a wolf, then so be it. She’d go through life a merry maid and never give herself a chance to wonder what she was missing out on.
“I say we focus on getting that chalice to the boy and forget that this night ever happened.”
“But Lilith—”
Dropping her hand, she took a step back. “For the sake of what few dregs of pride I have remaining, you will drop this now and never bring it back up again.”
His jaw clenched forcefully before he finally muttered, “Yes, I will speak of this no more.”
For the entire next week all they did was sleep, eat, and travel with very little conversation to be had in between.
Giles felt horrible for the way he’d handled himself that night. He’d been confused and unsure how to go about broaching that topic. So he’d bungled it right out of the gates.
With matters of war, he was a master of precision. Matters of the heart, he was hopeless. It was why in all his years he’d never left his bachelordom—he did not know how to interact with the opposite sex outside of the bedroom.
Stepping over a fallen log, he watched as she jogged ahead of him. Her pelt was slick with sweat. Lilith had set herself a punishing pace these past few days, as though she were trying to outrun something.
He suspected that something was him.