Chapter 12: Say What You Owe Me

Linnet's POV

I had meant to ask him for the letter back.

That was what I told myself on the stairs, with my hand on the rail.

I had seen the lamp in his window.

I had known that he had broken the seal.

Now I stood in the doorway of his room with my heart in my throat, and I could not ask for anything.

"Linnet," Alaric said.

He stood up.

The letter slid off his knee and fell on the floor between us.

"It's true," he said. "You were in the river."

"Yes."

"You pulled me out."

"Yes."

"For eleven years."

"Yes."

He made a sound I had never heard from him.

It was a laugh with no humour in it, and it cracked in the middle.

"Eleven years, and you let me say it to your face," he said.

"On our wedding night I told you there was a girl I would love until I died.

"And you said you understood."

"I did understand."

"You were her."

"I was."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

The anger came up so fast that it surprised me.

I came into the room and shut the door behind me.

"You want to know why?" I said.

"You were lying in a bed that morning with a fever, asking for the girl who saved you.

"The first thing I heard in that castle was another woman answering to it."

"Linnet."

"I was eighteen.

"I had walked into your house wet to the skin, with no one in the world but a cat in a bag.

"And I thought, if I tell him now, he will marry me out of gratitude."

I watched his face change.

"I wasn't going to be married for a debt," I said.

"I wanted you to choose me, just once, on a day when you didn't owe me anything."

"I would have."

"You'd have married me. You'd have been kind.

"You'd have given me a ring and a title and a bed, because you owed me your life."

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