“How did you know?”she asked after a moment.“That you loved him?”
Mara thought about it.“Because the fear of losing him outweighed my fear of being hurt,” she said simply.“And because even broken, I wanted to choose him.”
Something twisted in Eliza’s chest.
That sounded beautiful.
And impossible.
No one would want someone like her.Someone cracked and scarred and unfinished.Someone whose silence wasn’t poetic, just damaged.
Mara studied her.“You okay?”
Eliza shook her head.“Not really,” she said.“And I might never be.Okay, I mean.”
The words fell heavy between them.
“What do you need to be okay,lvitsa?” Nikolai asked from the doorway.
Eliza turned.
He stood there quietly, having clearly arrived without either of them noticing, his expression unreadable—but his eyes were gentle.
And somehow, impossibly, she felt safer still.
Chapter Nine
He hadn’t meant tolisten in.
Kol was halfway down the hall when Eliza’s words stopped him cold.
I might never be okay.
They weren’t loud.They weren’t dramatic.Just a simple truth spoken into the quiet of the kitchen, heavy enough to anchor the air around it.He stayed where he was, one hand braced lightly against the wall, every instinct telling him not to move, not to interrupt, not to make this about him.
He had heard men confess fear before.Rage.Desperation.He had heard lies dressed up as bravado and truths buried beneath violence.