in love with your surly ass—and let me tell you, despite how the nymphs have inflated your ego, you are no prize in the relationship department,” she said with a curl of her lip, her grief swamping over her. She slapped her hand on the table again.
He was rigid, sorrow painted clearly on his face. His ears drooped and his head bent forward so that his antlers bowed slightly toward her. Fastening her eyes upon him, she whispered harshly in a broken voice. She barely managed to speak above a whisper, her voice breaking with horrible ugly sobs.
“What you did is detestable. I don’t care if you are tasked to chase Cacus to hell and back for the rest of eternity, there is nothing that will change the way I feel about how little care you demonstrated toward our relationship. I trusted you with everything when you trusted me with nothing. To block me without any explanation or discussing it with me was the absolute worst thing you could do to me. You took away any chance for me to defend myself or prove myself innocent against whatever paranoid delusion you had fallen into because of that fucking sword.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath. “What is worse—I had no idea at all that anything was wrong! Everything was so right just moments before, but as soon as we got back to the palace you pushed me away and were willing to believe the worst. Of course, you just disappeared. Why wouldn’t you then? You abandoned our bond and me when I was alone and waiting in your room, in the company of no one except that dryad taking pleasure in tormenting me. How could you have done that to me! I had put my trust in you, and I leaned on you when I didn’t dare do that with any other. It tore out my heart when you suddenly disappeared from within me. You broke me! By blocking our bond, you took every good thing that I allowed to grow between us and cruelly destroyed it with one move.” She closed her eyes, a tremor shaking her body as her tears broke free.
Huge ugly sobs wracked her and she slammed her hand repeatedly until he swept it up and caught it against his chest. She hauled back her other hand and slapped him for all it was worth and kept struggling and striking at him until he folded her tightly in his arms, his tail sliding snugly around her waist as he let out a pained sound issuing from deep within him. Holding her in place, he let her rage flow freely over him. She struggled, her claws biting into him as she struck at him repeatedly until, finally, she collapsed against him and wept.
Exhausted, she lay within his arms, half dangling in his grip. At some point he had drawn her close to him, his purr surrounding her as if to comfort her even though his own shoulders shook with sorrow. She felt the hot splash of his tears against her neck.
All the fight drained out of her as she slowly disentangled herself to pull away and stare at him hopelessly. She was hurt with a wound that refused to heal. It ate at her and bled at the slightest provocation. There were no words that would magically fix things, and his words, while honest and true to what she knew of the situation from Dorinda, were not, unsurprisingly, any kind of balm for her heart. Even the sobs that wracked him as he held her did little to ease the burn of the wounds in her heart.
She wanted more than anything to continue to rage at him, to beat at him with her fists and wail her rage as she’d done the first month after she returned home. Every day she had suffered alone, screaming out her pain and anger. She wanted to take them out on him. But she discovered she had only just those last tears to shed. Now… now she was just tired.
“I am exhausted Silv… Selvans,” she corrected wearily.
“Silvas,” he replied. “I know it is not my correct name, but though I hate to admit it, it makes me feel a warmth within me when you say it. Like it is something special between us. It makes a part of me that worries inclined to forbid the name to ever be spoken again to drive that unknown feeling away, but I cannot. I don’t