my cheeks would be red and blotchy, but I didn’t care. I was numb yet wracked with sorrow—erratically flitting from one sensation to the other.
“I didn’t think it was possible to feel so much loss,” I whispered and let Arthur push back strands of tear-dampened hair from my face. I put my hand to my chest. “I didn’t think it was possible to feel such emptiness in here.” I sucked in a shuddering breath. “In your heart.”
Arthur’s piercing blue stare captured mine and didn’t let go. Gripping my cheeks harder, he repeated, “You’re not alone.” Each of his words was a salve. A door unlocking that had been bolted shut. Hope bursting into glimmering light.
“I’m not?” I whispered.
Arthur pressed his forehead to mine. His lips grazed along mine. “No.”
I grasped his wrists and embraced the warmth his hands brought to my face. “I’m …” I pulled back so I could see his face. “I think I’m broken,” I confessed, feeling the truth of those words ache in my heart. “I’m not sure I’ll ever get over this, over losing them.” Arthur’s hands flexed on my cheeks, and I knew that was his way of telling me he knew how it felt. Of course he did. He had watched those he loved die around him too. “Can you love a broken queen?” I asked, smiling though my face felt numb.
Arthur searched my eyes. “Can you love a broken king?”
I stopped breathing. As he stared at me, I realised he was waiting for my answer. No, he needed my answer. Because Arthur, my Arthur, had just let me in a fraction more.
He was broken too. This man, this unshakeable and unreadable titan of a man, was broken too.
“I already do,” I said, my confessional whisper wrapping around us in the empty room.
Arthur sighed. “Then don’t ask questions you already know the answer to.”
His gruff response stopped my heart. Arthur’s eyes flitted away from mine, only to fix on them again as his veiled admission sank into my soul. He loved me too. It was the closest he’d got to admitting the words aloud.
This broken king loved his broken queen.
I kissed him. Lips sore and cheeks flamed, I kissed him and tried to pour all the love I had inside me into that kiss. I pulled back and looked at the target. Bullet holes riddled the paper. Arthur picked up the gun and handed it to me. “Yours,” he said. As I took the gun from him, he wrenched me forward so hard I hit his chest. Eyes burning, he said, “I need you to learn how to use it. You need to master it. Then use it if you ever need to. No hesitation.” Arthur’s breathing quickened, betraying just how much he needed this from me.
“I promise,” I said and was rewarded with a deep kiss.
“Let’s go home.”
I followed Arthur out of the pits and into his car. He held my hand the entire way home. I sank into the heated seat and watched the early-morning mist rise over London. Market sellers were rousing from their sleep, readying for the morning of trade. I loved this time of morning. The calm before the storm. When it was quiet and still. The deep breath before the exhale of day.
I felt dead on my feet as we entered the church. Emotionally and physically exhausted.
As we passed the living room, Arthur changed track and pulled me inside. Vinnie sat before the fire, staring into the flames. Arthur nodded at his brother and poured me a large whisky. As I took the drink from Arthur and downed half the glass in one, feeling the hot liquid coat my throat, I felt someone watching me.
It was Vinnie. His head tilted to the side as he examined my face, as if he was listening to someone speaking into his ear. I smiled at him, always feeling such sorrow for this man and the demons that plagued him. A man clearly lost in life’s intricate maze. I raised the glass to my lips, needing the numbing effects of the alcohol, when Vinnie said, “They don’t blame you.”
My hand froze around the glass. He nodded at what I presumed was his hallucination of Pearl. Vinnie took a deep breath. “They don’t blame you at all.”
“Who?” I asked, feeling Arthur move behind me. He curled his arm around my waist and pulled me back into his chest, as if he knew I needed his steady frame to keep me from falling.