Chapter 153
Emmaline
Daelan hasn't let me go for a moment since he came back.
His arms are around me, his face buried in my hair, his breath warm against my neck. He holds me like I might disappear, like I'm the only thing keeping him tethered to the ground.
I let him. My petty jealousy about some woman claiming to be his fiancée dissolves in the face of whatever is breaking him from the inside.
He tells me she was lying. The girl with the violet eyes, the one who said she was his—she was taken by the Association for interrogation, and Daelan says she was never anything to him. Just a story his mother told. Just a tool.
Then he tells me about his family. Vague facts, whispered against my skin like confessions.
"So this Matriarch is your mother?" I ask, wrapping an arm around his midsection, pulling him closer.
"Unfortunately." His voice is flat.
"She's that bad?"
He doesn't speak. His arms tighten around me, and I feel him swallow, feel the tension coiling in his shoulders.
