Lightbringer (Empirium #3) - Claire Legrand Page 0,191

too small for his tall frame. Was it here that he had spent those months under Ludivine’s tutelage? Had she visited him as he slept, sent him nightmares within these very walls?

He looked up, realizing too late who stood before him. He was unable to hide the open mess of his face, his bloodshot eyes and reddened cheeks, the wildness of his hair. He caught her eyes and looked immediately away.

“No,” she told him, going to him at once. “If I don’t get the relief of not having to look at you, then you have to see me too.” She lifted his chin so their gazes locked. His lashes were wet. He tried to look away again; she did not allow it, holding his face still. He had kept himself clean-shaven while in Corien’s palace, but these last few wild days had not allowed him the time. His cheeks were growing rough again, and she wanted to rub her fingers against them until she could remember no other sensation. She longed to hurt him in whatever vicious way she could imagine. She longed to run from him and everything that awaited them.

“I know what has been done to you,” she told him firmly. It was difficult to speak. She put a metal stamp on every word. “I know what you’ve endured. You have my pity. You do not have my trust.”

He nodded, his mouth held tightly. He had been expecting her to say that. Against her palms, she could feel the muscles of his jaw working.

Too many words crowded her throat, many of them brutal. She could have screamed with frustration. This was moving too fast for both of them. There was too much hurt between them, too many lies and too many days apart.

“But you do have my love,” she said furiously, as if it were a curse.

Simon watched her, hardly breathing. He did not blink.

“I wish you had nothing of mine,” Eliana said through her teeth. Her cheeks burned with anger, and her heart ached in too many places. “Not my love, not my anger, not my memories. I wish you hadn’t seen what he did to me. I wish…”

She could no longer speak. Simon reached up to cover her hands with his own. He barely touched her; she was an eggshell in his palms.

“I wish I could hurt you as you hurt me,” she whispered. “I wish I didn’t want you still or care for you at all. I wish all I wanted was to help you find your power again.” She shook her head. Her voice teetered on the edge of something sharp. “But I want more than that. Even now, even after everything.”

When Simon closed his eyes, tears slipped out. He turned his face into her palm, whispered her name against her fingers.

She watched his mouth, fighting ferociously against her own misery. It split her vision into diamonds. “He hurt me,” she said softly. “I called for you. I screamed for you to help me.”

Simon let out a single sob. Fumbling, he reached for her. His face against her ribs, his hands clutching her shirt. The tender weight of his palms sent a fierce bite of joy up her arms. Her instincts were at war. To leave him aching, to lean into his warmth. Two paths and no answers.

“God, I know,” he said, voice muffled. “I heard you. I heard every word, Eliana. I heard it every time he hurt you, and I could do nothing. There were times he made me watch, and you were so delirious with pain you didn’t even realize I was there.”

His words spilled like shards of glass against her belly. Each one stabbed her, and yet she clutched his shoulders, held him fast, wished she could press him inside her until he no longer existed anywhere else.

She held his shoulders and watched the wall as he wept. His tears were as silent as hers, his body rigid. They were both used to that, she supposed. They were used to hiding the signs of their pain.

And suddenly, she could no longer bear to remain standing. She didn’t care that she had wanted to hurt him, that for months she had watched him stalk through the palace and imagined his murder at her hands.

She bowed her head to kiss his crown. “I’ll miss you,” she told him, not meaning to say it, and then a sob burst out of her, unexpected and savage. She could hardly breathe; tears seized her like