Clearing her throat, Haven repeated the words that ran through her mind like a mantra. “He is my friend, my protector, and my most trusted soldier. That’s all.”
Neri’s full lips pressed together as she seemed to weigh the best response before finally settling on the simple truth. “He’s more than that to you.”
Damn Neri’s miss-nothing gaze. Haven suspected she’d learned that from being an illegitimate child on the run, her survival dependent on reading the room before anyone else.
Sizing up people quickly was a valuable skill—one that now served her well as queen.
Haven picked at a fleck of dried juice on the table. “It doesn’t matter; he doesn’t feel the same way toward me, and I respect that.”
Neri snorted. Actually snorted. Looking less like a queen in that moment than a friend. A very annoying, very smug friend. “Haven, whenever you’re in a room his eyes are on you every moment. His body positioned toward yours. He’s aware of your every movement, every discomfort, every breath. There is no one else that can even catch his attention, and believe me, more than a few mortal females have tried.”
A surge of hot anger flooded her at the thought, and she wet her lips with a glass of water. “He’s very protective.”
“No male is that attentive, not like that. Not every moment of every day, with females practically throwing themselves at his feet.”
Her hands curled in her lap. Did Neri really have to keep mentioning all the women Stolas had access to?
“I think you’re forgetting that it was Stolas who dragged your husband to a brothel.”
“Yes, something I have yet to forgive him for. But Eros said Stolas didn’t once look at the women, something even my husband, whom I trust implicitly, surely did not do.” One of her sharply trimmed brows arched. “That is how Eros determined Stolas was using him for information, by the way. After he sobered, of course.”
The relief Haven felt at hearing that was eclipsed by frustration. This was silly. Neri was making the same mistake Haven did, believing Stolas’s unfettered loyalty was something more than it was. “You have to understand Stolas to make sense of his actions. He’s the most dogged person I’ve ever met, singularly driven to his cause, and right now, I’m that cause. His duty is to protect me, but that’s all I am to him—a cause.”
Her heart kicked as she articulated the words aloud, breathing life into them.
For the first time, she wondered if Stolas might be throwing himself into the task of protecting her to distract himself from his demons.
Demons which she was beginning to suspect were the size of a small army.
By focusing his every waking moment on Haven, he didn’t have to confront the mountain of trauma left over from centuries of tragedy and torture. He was, after all, now living in the same home where his entire family had been slaughtered in front of him. Where he’d been imprisoned, forced to marry his family’s murderer.
Forced to become a monster.
Neri shook her head, her earrings tinkling softly. “For the daughter of the Goddess, there is so much about the heart—and desire—that you do not know.” Her hand was warm as she placed it on Haven’s wrist. “Just beware, in Eritreyia, the mortals despise Stolas. To them, he embodies the Curse, plague and affliction, and most of all, that one thing we mortals all fear: death. If you were to align yourself romantically with him, there are many who would not follow you.”
Her statement sliced through Haven like a knife, made all the more painful because Haven knew Neri spoke the truth.
And yet . . . “You say that, but you know better than most that mortals can accept unlikely marriages that go against . . . custom.”
“I do, and the obstacles my common birth and colorful background caused was almost enough to make me leave Eros, if only to spare him the trouble. But Haven, I promise you, it is not the same. If it were, if there were any chance—any at all—that the mortal kingdoms could accept such a union, I would support you even if I didn’t understand it.”
Haven’s chest ached as if Neri’s words had burrowed inside her, nestling deep as they carved out an ever-growing hole.
She glanced over the marble balcony, shielding her eyes, as if she just now felt the morning sun’s fury. Sailors and fisherman swarmed the docks in controlled chaos. She let her gaze roam