of agonized nerves.
She takes two lung-fulls of shaky breaths and plows determinedly on.
“I wish I can suffer that pain in your stead, my love.”
“No—” I immediately growl.
Never!
“It’s unfair that you keep it from me,” she speaks over me. “If our places were reversed, wouldn’t you want to share my pain? Wouldn’t you want to help me any way you can? I am strong too, Tal. I can handle it.”
She sucks in a breath and swallows it down. It sounds as if she’s swallowing jagged glass the way a low groan of pain vibrates through her throat.
“It hurts so bad. Gods, it fucking hurts! But I can handle it, Tal. I want to. You want to fight for us. So do I. You have to let me fight for you too. Promise you won’t ever hide your pain from me. Not ever again. Promise.”
I clench my jaw tight and grit my teeth.
I don’t want to. I don’t want her to know the darkest parts of me.
Yes, she’s seen my memories. Perhaps even experienced them vicariously through my nightmares. But she doesn’t know.
“Trust me, Tal. Believe in me,” she whispers, holding me tight. “Believe in me the way you want me to believe in you. I do. I believe in you.”
She nuzzles her nose and lips along my collarbone through the thin cotton fabric of my shirt, trailing open-mouthed kisses along my throat, over my jugular.
“I’ve never told you my story. It seems insignificant compared to yours. I never wanted to burden you,” she murmurs against my skin, breathing me in.
“But then, I realized that I didn’t tell you because I’m afraid. I’m afraid of what you might think. That you’d be disgusted. Not by what was done to me, but by me. Because I’m a ruined, soiled, broken thing.”
“No…” I protest reflexively.
“I believe you,” she immediately says. “I believe your love won’t change even if you knew my past. Perhaps we’d even grow closer, because you’d know me better. So, I will tell you my story. Will you hear it?”
I nod. Of course, I’ll listen. She doesn’t have to ask.
And as I think this, the irony of my own reticence is not lost on me. She is teaching me a lesson.
Reluctantly, I am learning.
She lays her cheek against my chest once more and wraps her strong arms around me, hugging me snuggly, cuddling close.
“The Pure rebels broke through the Ivory Palace’s defenses that fateful day,” she begins. “Elsewhere, my mother, Queen Ashlu, fell by my own sister’s treacherous hands.”
This much I know. Medusa confessed it gleefully when she captured us a couple of years ago.
“Did you know that Inanna led the charge?”
I stiffen against her. I did not know. I was already in Medusa’s…possession then. I traded myself for her aid during the critical last battle. It was her Mate’s shadow warriors who changed the tide in the Pure Ones’ favor.
Ishtar nods slightly, confirming her words.
“I think I even saw her from afar, our beautiful Inanna. A golden, warrior angel. Fierce and courageous. An Angel of Death sent from the heavens to take her vengeance and justice upon the Dark empire.”
I hear pride in Ishtar’s voice, despite that her own daughter led the battalion that destroyed her home.
“I defended the palace as best I could, with what soldiers the queen didn’t take with her. But my heart wasn’t in it, Tal. I don’t think I truly wanted to win. Even before I met you I wanted the Pure Ones to be free. I never understood why Dark Ones had to subjugate all other Kinds. And when I met you, I couldn’t think of anything else. It was borne of sheer selfishness—I simply wanted you—but I wanted you to be free so that I could Claim you fair and square.”
She huffs in self-deprecation.
“I have never been as noble as you, my love. I only thought of my own needs.”
This is so blatantly untrue, I want to interrupt her speech. But she squeezes me tight and cuts off my breath to speak.
“It’s still my turn,” she reminds me stubbornly.
I grunt my acquiescence and let her continue without interruption.
“It wasn’t the Pure Ones who destroyed my home, you need to know that. It was never your fault, however tangentially. Not even a little. My sister killed my mother. My sister turned into a monster of her own making. It was never you who took them away from me. Perhaps they never loved me the way I loved them. As families ought to love each