“She isn’t. She’s Maddie. And she’s free to do what she wishes with whom she wishes it,” Derrik returned.
His meaning clear, it was another blow and more poison choked him.
“Careful, brother,” Apollo whispered.
“I understand you,” Derrik told him, his voice gentling. “I understand what you’re feeling.”
“You have no bloody idea,” Apollo gritted.
“I do,” Derrik retorted.
“Then, if you did, you’d know, your closest friend, a brother of the horse if not of blood, walking into your study, telling you he’d take the woman who’s the spitting image of your dead wife to the Vale, to Fleuridia, to his bed, is beyond the pale. You could take her to the stars, you would still lie awake at night knowing I was lying awake at night tormented in the knowledge that she was pressed to your side. And you’d do that knowing in your gut that was the worst betrayal imaginable.”
Apollo watched Derrik flinch but he didn’t back down.
He bit off, “You can’t not want her and still have her, Lo.”
“I can do whatever I gods damn want, Rik,” Apollo returned. “I paid for her to be here. She’s my wife. I’ll see to her and I’ll protect her.”
“How? By doing the same thing that toad of a husband of hers did to her in the other world?” Derrik shot back. “But abusing her through neglect rather than with your fists?”
His vision darkened and Apollo strode forward. Derrik prepared as he did so, bracing, ready for a confrontation.
He didn’t get one.
Apollo moved by him and threw open the door.
He turned in it and leveled his gaze on his friend.
“Think on this,” he ordered.
“I have, for four months,” Derrik replied.
“Then think longer,” Apollo ground out, slammed the door and stormed down the hall.
* * * * *
He paced the secluded room he’d demanded for this meeting, its fire warm in the grate, but Apollo didn’t feel warm.
I’m sorry.
He heard her whispered words, her voice had been sleepy but those words were heartfelt.
And he felt her soft body burrowing into his.
I’m sorry.
He stopped pacing and closed his eyes.
But when he did, he saw her eyes, scared, confused and holding pain, peering deep into his.
You’re not a hallucination.
He opened his eyes and muttered to himself, “Where the bloody hell is she?”
He was at The Swan.
He’d managed to drive Torment, his roan, through the snow and into the town with his mind consumed with finding reasons not to murder his closest friend.