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Wren couldn’t speak.

That wasn’t what she expected him to say. She thought Arrik was just another warmongering, power hungry prince with an insatiable appetite for blood and power.

But it was something deeper. Truer.

It was the only reason he could have ever given that would result in any sympathy from her. They had something in common.

It only made Wren hate herself more.

“What do you plan on doing now that you have me within your grasp?” Wren asked, changing the subject. Bonding with her enemy husband wasn’t on her list of things to do that day.

He flexed his fingers. “There have beenthreeother instances when I could have captured you. Including when you left Verlanti in the first place.” A slow, dangerous smile crossed his face, entirely devoid of humor. “Surely you must have at least suspected that someone was planted within the rebellion?

“Who?” she demanded.

He gave her the same infuriating smile. “Josenu.”

“I—” Of course Wren had thought it, at first, but that had been quickly extinguished when Arrik failed to stampede into the rebellion’s base and recapture her. Josenu clearly workedforthe rebellion. But if he was working there on behalf of Arrik…

“Why?” she breathed. “Why did you let me escape?”

“Because I wanted you to be safe.”

Such a simple answer, but she couldn’t trust it.

Can’t you?

He released one of her hands and stroked her chin with a tenderness the huge elf should never have been capable of. Her free hand dropped to his chest.

“Why?” she pressed again. She badly wanted to know.Neededto know. “Why tell me?”

The tenderness from Arrik’s touch met his eyes, softening them beyond compare. Her breath caught and her heart clenched. She’d never seen him look so vulnerable and sincere.

“You might believe me a monster, Wren. And I am, when it comes to many things. I’ve had to be. But if there is one thing I would have you believe to be true about me is that I never want to involve innocent people in the goings-on of my corrupt family. Of the high court. It’s why I never wanted to marry, though my father insisted on it time and time again. The path I’ve chosen is a dangerous one. Treacherous.” He paused. “I could never ask a woman to be part of it—least of all a woman I care about.”

Wren believed him. She believed every word the barbaric man who’d murdered her family said. She believed him, and she respected him for it, because if she had walked down the path of a monster for pure vengeance, she expected she would have had a similar kind of moral compass to Arrik too.

People weren’t just black and white.

Good and evil.

Her husband was both and yet neither.

He’d attacked her kingdom.

He’d protected her.

He’d imprisoned her.

He had let her free the slaves.

Wren flicked her gaze to her hand, still trapped beneath one of Arrik’s gigantic palms, and he let her go. But he didn’t move away. She could feel his breath fanning her face, hot and somehow desperate.

“What is it you want fromme,then?” she asked, knowing that it was the only question she had left that needed answering.

When Arrik lifted his fingers from Wren’s chin, the tenderness in his expression disappeared along with them. It was as if he had shaken back into the skin he’d wornbeforespilling his innermost secrets to Wren. She discovered that she was sad about it.

That was something for her to deal with another time, when sleep escaped her and all she’d be left with were thoughts of Arrik and his fingers on her cheek.