“Are you truly asking me that?” Indignation hung on every word. Her implication was clear: How could I ask that after she’d just found me with Maris?
“Chasan is not Maris. He’s no harmless suitor. He is as manipulative and cunning as his father.” And I’d seen the way he looked at Luna.
“Is that so? And how often have you seen him exactly? Talked to him? You’ve scarcely risen from your sickbed, where Maris attends you ever so diligently.”
“I’ve seen it in his eyes. I know his sort.”
She inhaled swiftly, pulling her shoulders back, and I knew I had said the wrong thing. I hadn’t meant to make it sound like I viewed her as less in any way because of her blindness, but that was precisely what I had done. “Oh, that’s right. I’m merely a blind girl. I can’t possibly be a good judge of character.”
The word merely couldn’t be applied Luna. Not in any way. She would always be everything. Of course, if I were to tell her that right now, she wouldn’t believe me.
Sighing, I dragged a hand through my hair. “I didn’t come here to fight with you.”
“You shouldn’t have come here at all.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t, but it’s acceptable for Chasan to visit you in the middle of the night?”
“He wanted to make sure I was all right after what happened. He saved my life tonight.”
He saved her life? It made me resent him all the more. I should have been there for her. I didn’t want to think she might need him. “You don’t even know him,” I shot back.
“He’s my betrothed,” she replied evenly, but there was a stiffness to her voice that was impossible to miss.
I froze. Hearing this from her curdled my blood. “Is that true? You’ll marry him?” My heart raced at the possibility that she had accepted this as her fate.
“Is that not the expectation?”
Not precisely an answer. “I’ve never cared much about the expectations of others.” Nor had I thought she cared. I’d imagined that she’d be eager to leave this place. But if I were to believe her now, she wouldn’t be leaving with me.
She snorted and edged even farther away from me. “I just caught you kissing Maris, and here you stand wanting me to define my relationship with Chasan.” She flung out her words like a well-aimed arrow and tsked. “Hardly reasonable.”
“She kissed me.” The truth, but it rang weakly even to my ears.
Luna released a huff of hollow laughter and shook her head, clearly not impressed with my excuse. “You don’t owe me an explanation. I don’t own your lips.”
My chest swelled on a tense breath. “You know how I feel about you. I haven’t hid my feelings—”
“Fowler, don’t.”
“We need to talk,” I insisted, following her retreating form across the room. She used to listen to me, but now she felt distant.
She continued backing away from me, cocking her head at a wary angle. “If you are found in here—”
“They’re keeping us apart.” I stayed dogged in my pursuit of her, my steps biting into the plush rug covering the stone floor. “You have to see that. Since we arrived here. They don’t want us alone together.”
She shrugged, twisting her hands into the voluminous fabric of her nightgown. “It matters not. There’s nothing we have to say to each other worth risking their displeasure—”
“Risking their displeasure? Do you hear yourself? You sound frightened . . . beaten. Where is the Luna that I know?”
“Maybe you don’t know me. Maybe you never did. I certainly don’t know you.” Her chest lifted high on a quick inhalation. I knew she was thinking about me standing in the corridor with Maris, and regret stabbed me in the chest.
“You’re wrong.” I stepped forward and touched her face. She flinched but didn’t pull back. I clung to that. I could still reach her. “Do you feel my gaze on you? Do you feel my heart, Luna? It’s yours. It belongs to you. You know me.” I added my other hand to her face, holding her as gently as a bird in my hands, careful not to crush her wings.
Moisture gathered in her ink-dark eyes. Her voice came out in a hoarse whisper. “I thought I did. I don’t blame you for your birth. I’m not angry about that anymore. It’s not your fault who your father is. But that doesn’t change the fact that I still don’t know you. I don’t know what it is that truly drives you, I don’t know why you’re running from your father, I don’t know why you’re agreeable to staying here, to marrying Maris—”
“You. You drive me. It didn’t used to be that way. I can’t explain exactly when or how it became that way. But that’s the way it is.”
She didn’t speak for some time, various emotions flickering across her face. She looked down at the ground as though she felt the weight of my stare and needed to escape it. “What?” I asked. “What are you thinking? Tell me, Luna. Talk to me.”
She gave a slight shake of her head. “Maris—”
“Means nothing to me,” I finished for her. “I know how it sounded. It’s how I need it to look.”