Page 232 of Sword & Shadow
“Jonn,” she said his name like an admonition, “please, tell me you didn’t sell your life purely to give me a break from the road.”
“You were drowning, Evylin. I had to save you.”
Knowing this was another result of her foolish fears, Evylin dropped her head in her hands. She took a deep breath, then looked up, pushing the hair back behind her ears. “So,” she concluded, “you made this promise knowing they’d want you to Bond with...with me or another Warrior should I...”
His lack of response was all the confirmation she needed.
Evylin shook her head, a disbelieving laugh slipping out of her. Auden had taken Deckard at his word because they all knew: Deckard would never break a promise. His nobility and integrity were faultless. It was part of what made him so insufferably wonderful.
“All right,” Evylin said.
Deckard’s eyes narrowed. “All right?”
She shrugged. “You were a soldier when I married you. Your future was never yours to begin with. Why should it bother me now?”
His grip on the settee tightened. “Because if we remain married, they’ll require us to Bond,” he said as though it were a death sentence. “I know what Hewitt meant to convince you of. Trust me, we talked about it plenty. But I will still give you an annulment if that’s what you want because if you stay with me, our future will be bound to the Alliance and...to each other.”
Evylin held his gaze unflinchingly. “Our future...” she whispered with a sad smile. “I’m afraid we might not have much of one.”
Rising from her seat, Evylin walked around the settee. She felt the need for distance, to put physical barricades between them as she worked to pull down the intangible ones she’d erected long ago. She needed the safety of separation before she could risk the fullness of vulnerability.
The rich velvet of the seat back tingled under her fingertips as she faced him once more. “Jonn, I was a fool,” she began, her voice soft and slow.
His chin lifted, brow pinched together as he listened intently.
Evylin couldn’t help smiling at that quirk of his. She adored that concerned wrinkle. “I convinced myself that I couldn’t be with you,” she admitted, “because I was afraid of you.”
Deckard’s lips parted, but he didn’t try to speak.
“The truth is,” she continued, “you scare me more than anything we’ve faced. You always have.”
Her breath caught as she forced herself to be brave. “I never wanted a normal life. Though I secretly dreamed I’d marry, I never believed I’d find someone who...” She paused, thinking of his criteria for a wife. “Who was enough,” she said tenderly.
He let out a singular, breathy scoff, turning away. She studied his profile, the angular lines noticeably Waulden now that she knew of his unexpected ancestry. He’d always had a regal bearing, something beyond the down-to-earth quality of Ephrian heritage.
“Then you came along,” she continued, “and you shattered everything I ever thought I wanted. You were good, clever, caring, and ambitious. You were handsome, too, though I didn’t want to admit it.”
He shook his head, though her compliments drew the corner of his mouth up in a smile.
“Beyond that, you were a captain—the very sort of man who could take me on all those adventures I’d dreamed about.”
Evylin forced herself to keep speaking as Deckard finally met her gaze again. “It all terrified me. I’d never wanted to be alone, but I’d never wanted someone before either. I—” Her words faltered as he began to walk around the furniture toward her, their gazes locked. It was too soon. She wasn’t ready for him to be so close, to see her so wholly exposed.
As she stepped back, hand gliding over the golden rim of the settee’s back, he paused, only a few short strides separating them.
Evylin’s lungs grew tight in her chest, her breath coming in rapid bursts. “I didn’t know what to do,” she finally said. “And then Hewitt went and—and got us married.”
They both smiled at that.
“He has always given me everything I wanted. Even when I didn’t know what that was myself.”
Evylin swallowed down the rest of her fear, ready to reveal her whole heart to him. “But even if he hadn’t,” she said, the words a whisper of sound in the grip of her emotions, “had the circumstances been different... Had you asked to write to me, to court me from a distance...I would have said yes.”
Her grip on the couch tightened, holding herself in place as he took one step closer.
“Had a year—or simply months—passed, and if you’d asked to marry me...I would have said yes.”
Deckard closed the gap, standing directly in front of her. She lifted her chin to stare up into his eyes, so brilliant and ever-changing. All it would take was a raised hand or the smallest lean in, and the space between them would dissipate.
