Chapter 20: The Favor

Darian's POV

I have lived four hundred years, and I had never been afraid to go home until that night.

She did not speak in the car.

She sat across from me with her hands in the sleeves of my coat.

She watched the dark road run under the headlights.

At the cliff house I held the door.

She walked into the long front room and stood by the cold hearth, and she turned to face me.

"Tell me what he meant," Rosalind said.

I took off my gloves.

It gave my hands something to do.

"The envoy was right," I said. "I have wanted Crowhurst ruined for three hundred years. When their heir began to burn, I was glad."

"I know," she said. "You told me in the study."

She came a step closer.

"That's not what he meant. He said *how long he has waited.*"

I looked at the hearth I had not lit.

"When you called me from your driveway, I reached you in ten minutes."

"I had been waiting a month for that call."

"I knew about the ring the night I gave you my card. I knew what it was doing to you."

"I could have told you at the gala. I could have told you in the helicopter."

"And you didn't."

"No."

"Why not?"

It took me a long time to answer.

She let it take that long.

"Because I believed you would go back," I said. "I thought it was the shape of your life."

"If I told you early, you would run to save him. If I told you late, you would be too angry to want anything from me."

"So I waited, and I let you walk into that garden."

"I thought the only way you would ever want me was if you had no one else."

"I thought you would go back to him once he was weak enough to beg."

"He begged in the road," Rosalind said.

"Yes."

"I watched you watch him from the car."

"I thought, *there it is.*" My voice was low. "I thought you would take his hand."

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