Page 139 of To Touch A Silent Fury

I nodded. “I know.”

36

Tani

He knew?

He knew.

Hanindred rubbed his cheek against my neck.What he know?

Of course, he would never have married me, then. How much of an idiot was I?

“How long?” I asked, needing to know how stupid I had been. “How long have you known?”

Lang stared at me, looking uncomfortable. He leaned further back, giving me more space but also letting the sun fall against his chest. If he had brought me out here to seduce me, he had made a mistake by his admission. “From the start.”

I clapped my hand over my mouth, letting Hanindred move how he wanted. There was no point hiding him now.

From our first meeting back in the forest… he had known. He had let me lie to him forweeks. By my blood, the embarrassment coursed through me faster than a swiftriver current.

“How could I forget a face like yours?” he asked. “Your beauty has haunted me for years. Did you think I would not know you in a breath, in a moment, at a glance?”

My heart skipped. “Why did you never—?”

“I destroyed your life. I wasn’t going to destroy your chance to rebuild it. It was the lie you needed to tell. As it still is.”

He said it so matter of fact. So plain.I destroyed your life.

My beauty had haunted him, he said. Did he know how his final look had haunted me? How the thought of his face as he appraised me from the arena had tormented me, driven me, fuelled me for years to come? How it still did, even as my traitorous heart had warmed to his unfathomable kindness?

Now, his kindness was understandable. It was nothing more than guilt. Some relief filled me, in that he must still believe me Broken, for he looked at me as if he knew he had smashed some irretrievable part of me.

Everything fell into place now. His strange remarks, his familiarity, his generosity. It was all to attempt to pay back his actions a span ago.

I must have imagined it was anything more.

“Why did you do it?”

Long had I wanted to ask him, and I thought I would never get the chance. Why did you Break me? Why was I such a problem? I didn’t even want my Fate, and still, I wasn’t allowed it.Why me?

Hanindred pushed against me again, and his attempt to console me only made me sadder.

But I would not cry. I stared at Langnathin with all the rage of years of struggle.

He did not flinch. “To save you.”

“No.”

He didn’t get to do that.

He flinched. “It was the only way I could save yourlife—”

“You lie,” I spat.

Fuck you. Fuck you, fuck you.

How dare he suggest he pulled the rug from my only chance of a life tohelpme? His rigid self-importance had me fighting not to slap him. My toes curled, my body tensed, every part of me lit with anger.