She was right. It was selfish of me to hope she’d fall out of love with David because, for that to happen, he would have to hurt her pretty badly. I took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay. Then I hope you never love me. I hope you and David live eternally happy lives together.”

“Liar.”

We both laughed. It was kind of irritating to have a person who could read me almost as well as I could read others. But nice at the same time.

“I'm trying, Ara. I do want what's best for you. And if that's my brother, then, in my heart, he's who I want you to be with.” Even if I will eventually have to kill myself just to ease the pain.

“Then you should stop touching me like your girlfriend. If he saw that, he’d be really pissed.”

“Yeah, I know.” I sat back, sliding my hands slowly away from her body to savour the last touch. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

It wasn’t okay. I needed some distance. She wasn’t wearing anything but a shirt under that sheet, and the instinct-driven man inside me knew that only too well. I moved away and sat on the chair again. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn't you demand I give your ring back?”

She frowned. “I didn't know that was an option.”

I scoffed. How was it not? “Ara, you never sit by and let things happen if you don't approve. If you wanted that ring, you’d have stomped your foot until I gave it to you. So, why didn't you?”

She stared at me, realizing it for the first time herself. She didn’t want it back. “You're reading into it too much.”

“Am I?” I grabbed the ring from my pocket and pressed it into her palm, folding her fingers around it. “Or are you just not telling me what you really think?”

She slipped the ring back on her finger and rolled away from me, hating herself for the truth she’d just admitted inside. “Go away, Jason. You don't know anything about me.”

But I did. I knew I shouldn’t have forced her to see that truth so soon. She wasn’t ready. “Oh, don't know anything about you, huh?” Luckily, I also knew how to cheer her up. I pulled the blanket away from her. “I know your ticklish spot.”

“No!” She squealed, jerking around as I dug my fingers into her ribs. “Stop!”

I laughed aloud, feeling pure joy for one of the first times in so long. It was the way she laughed—such a sweet little giggle, so honest and so unguarded. I could see why my brother loved it so much. She was just so beautifully innocent.

I didn’t want her to stop, so I kept tickling, gentle enough not to hurt her but firm enough to hold her down a little so she couldn’t get away. Not that she wanted to get away. She looked up and her heart burned with love for me. This was exactly where we both wanted to be, no matter what the consequence.

“See?” I pinned both hands beside her face and leaned right down, pretending to be puffed out, knowing how much she loved it when I played human. “I know more about you than anyone else in this world, Ara-Rose. And I know you didn’t ask me for that ring because you liked the fact that I had it. You liked knowing how it made me feel to carry it, as if I owned a part of you my brother never would.”

“What part?”

All of you. Your heart, soul, mind, body—future. “The truth.”

She went completely stiff under me. That was all I needed to say, and her mind would fill in the rest.

I tried not to laugh. As I moved to kneel back, the warmth off her body—from between her legs—brushed my knee. She was naked beneath this shirt. I knew I shouldn’t look, but my eyes slowly strayed down her waist, past her hips, stopping there where the shirt rose up past her belly button. She let me look. She laid there, legs slightly apart, me kneeling between them, and for that second, she let me look.

I held my breath. Everything in the room getting hotter, including Ara. She patterned it out in her thoughts; me and her, making love. The thought stayed small enough that she didn’t even know she thought it, but it was enough to send my heart and my blood into overdrive.

I quickly let go of her hand and pulled the shirt down, catching a glimpse of the horror she felt when she remembered Arthur being right where I was. “What happened down there tonight, Ara?”

“Where?”

“In the training hall. Why were you down there—practically naked?”

Although I already knew the truth, I just wanted her to tell me, but she wasn’t going to, until her thoughts did.

I swept her hair off her brow, frowning, pretending I didn’t already know. “Whoa. Ara, you’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“What?” She pretended, too—that she didn’t know what I’d just seen. The games we play.

“That’s what you were doing down there tonight? Arthur? Really?”

“I…” She blinked a few extra times, pretending again. But I could play this game as long as she wanted. “You saw that?”

“Sweet girl, I saw everything.” I rested back on my knees, placing my hand to her thigh, my thumb discreetly holding the shirt to cover her so it wouldn’t move if she did. “So that's what the dagger’s for—that’s what David wants it for?”

“And that’s why he hasn't been coming to see me.” She grabbed that damn locket and held it tight. “He can't bear it. He’s wanted to tell me so badly, but he knows I’ll fight him on it. He’s planning to just disappear.”

And the game was over. I might have known in her thoughts what she planned to do with my uncle, but this was the first time I’d seen that—seen the pain it caused her, seen the devastation she felt because she knew she couldn’t betray David that way and, in that, she would be sending him to his death. How was that possibly her fault?

I landed on top of her, our noses in line. “No.”

“No, what?”

I just didn’t know what to say. No, I won’t let you suffer. No, I won’t let you blame yourself. No, I will not, over my dead body, see you sleep with my uncle to save David. I would rather die. I would rather be tortured at my brother’s hands for eternity. “No. I won't let this happen.”

“What?”

“I'm not letting you do this to yourself.” I knew what I had to do. I knew she knew it too. Without even thinking, I reached down and unfastened her buttons—my uncle’s buttons. I needed her out of this shirt, his scent off her beautiful body. It was almost enough to make me gag. “I won't see you suffer my uncle’s touch then hate yourself for the rest of eternity.”

“I have to.” She stopped me. “I can't lose David.”

“But you can lose me,” I said, and rolled the shirt off her shoulder, seeing her perfect white skin in a completely different light to ever before. I couldn’t think about the fact that she was okay with that—that, as I said it, she realised what I was going to do and accepted it, because she could accept my death before she could accept David’s. I pushed the thought aside, breaking to tears beneath the external strength. I owed her this. I owed her my pain—knew how it would feel to know that, as I laid between her legs, she wouldn’t be making love to me, but fighting for him.

“Jase—” She saw it, though. She saw the hurt in my eyes. Her hand slowly came up along my face, and I just wanted to fold into her, cry, tell her I love her, tell her to let him die. Let him go. And you and I will be happy forever. Together. “If you father the heir, you’ll be going to your death.”

I laughed. “Precisely.”

“Why would you want that?”

“You don't know?”

She shook her head.

“You really have no idea what you are to me, Ara, do you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I…” So she knew I loved her, but that was it. She couldn’t fathom the depths I would go to for her. And I just didn’t know how to explain it, how to make her see that I would burn in a fire, drown myself in acid, peel my skin back and suffer for eternity to save her from one tear. “It would take a lifetime for me to show you how I feel. There are no words I could find to say it in one breath, and I love you just doesn’t hold enough weight for the feeling I have in my soul that you are everything. You are my life, my breath, my reason to get up, to smile, to live each day. I will never let you go.” I touched her soft, rose-petal skin for what might be the last time. “Don't you see? One day my brother will come back here, and I won't get to be with you anymore and, eventually, that will kill me anyway.”

“But, Jase.” Her pretty lip quivered. “How can I live in a world without you?”

She knew the answer to that. She didn’t need to ask. I tore the shirt gently away from her body and tossed it as far from here as it would fly out that balcony door. She was waiting for me to answer, unaware or uncaring that she was completely and finally naked beneath me. She stared up, her eyes so full of questions; so blue with sadness that I knew I had to answer her. “Better than you can live in a world without David.”

And she broke. She may have known it before, but she only admitted it then, in that second, and she cried. It was only for a moment—only a few sobs before she stopped and looked up at me, seeing my shirt come away, and pressed her hand to my stomach. “Wait.”

I looked down at this fragile, sweet girl below me, her milk white skin against the cream sheets, her dark hair, like silk ribbons, spilling out around her face and over the pillow. Her eyes, like sapphires, the pupils so dark and so large with the heat of desire, forced an intake of breath in me—a pause to make this a memory—hold it in my heart for just a while longer.

“Will David really hate me if I have a baby to stop him from dying?”

“He’ll get over it.” I ditched my shirt to the end of the bed and fell on my hands over her body, keeping mine off hers enough that I could maintain control of my emotions. “Think of the agony he's been going through these past few months, probably worrying whose hands he’d be leaving you in once he’s dead.” Like mine. It was better this way. He would, eventually, forgive me, and her. I grabbed her hips and slid her down under me so she was in perfect line. “He knows this will happen, he just believes it’ll be when he's gone, cold in the ground. But it doesn't have to be that way.”

Her mind went white with surprise; she thought I’d rather see her suffer the pain of losing him so I could have her for myself. She was dead wrong.

“No,” I said, answering that thought, even though I knew she hated it when I did that. “Not sad—not eternally grieving him, Ara. If you really do love him more than me, then you will not ever be happy again if he dies.” I reached down and unzipped my jeans. “We’re doing this. I'm giving you my child, and I will die happy, knowing that I at least left a part of myself behind—in you.”