Livia's first, reflexive instinct was to step back. The words were possessive and they made something in her bristle. Yet there was an ache under the anger, a spasm of sympathy that she could not entirely smother.
Love, she had learned, had many shapes — not all of them gentle. She was terrified of the word 'love' because she knows, what it feels to be broken by it.
"Why does 'belong' feel like a cage?" she asked, voice small and honest. "Why does it feel like, I'm just a toy being claimed by someone I didn't mean to know?"
Aldus's jaw tightened. "The language of possession is crude and ugly," he admitted. "But what else can I say? I don't know how to ask. I only know how to claim. I have no practice in bargaining for someone's heart. I have only ever taken it."
"You took me," Livia said bluntly, and the truth slipped like a knife between them. "You took me into this life, into this role. You wrapped me in an expectation I never asked for."
