Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 125422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 627(@200wpm)___ 502(@250wpm)___ 418(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 627(@200wpm)___ 502(@250wpm)___ 418(@300wpm)
My eyes drop to my hand and stay focused there. Even though she’s not exactly Hanna and won’t judge me or take my words to heart, I still have a hard time admitting this to her.
“I see you for who you are,” she says in a low voice. “I remember, Tuoni. Not all at once, but the memories are there. They just belong to someone else.”
“And that someone else is who I want by my side,” I admit quietly.
“I’m not good enough?”
I glance up, meeting her eyes. There’s a spark of hurt there, and as much as I don’t want to hurt her, that spark has to be a good thing. It means she feels.
“You are more than good enough. You are still Hanna,” I tell her, my other hand cupping the side of her face and angling it toward me. “And I have faith I will get through to you eventually. As I said before, I always get what I want.”
She swallows hard and leans into my hand. “My mother said that each time I use my gifts, I lose a bit of myself.” She takes a beat, eyes flicking over my face in thought. “She also said the more I feel, the more connected I feel to this realm, the more I could lose my powers. It seems like an unfair situation to you.”
“And not to you?” I ask, my hand falling away.
“I don’t want to feel,” she says with a firm set to her chin. “It is too complicated and messy. I want to do my job. I want to help save the realm, fulfill the prophecy. It’s why my mother had me. She knew I had more of a chance than anyone else. She said my mortal side would prevent me from becoming too powerful. It’s the only thing holding me together when I use the sun.”
“You’re saying the power would corrupt you?”
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. That’s what the mortals always say.
“Corrupt is too human of a word. I don’t think I would be overtaken by evil, for evil is just a concept to me. Rather, this world and other worlds and the people in them wouldn’t matter to me at all. I could destroy the universe if it pleased me.”
I don’t like the sound of that. I clear my throat. “Well, then you can clearly see why your humanity is important, Hanna.”
“But so is winning,” she says. “I am uncertain if we can have both.”
“Then I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to try and see if we can have both. You, in love with me. I never realized how much I needed your heart until it was gone…” I trail off, shifting uncomfortably. One would think it would be easier to admit such things to someone who doesn’t feel or judge, but it isn’t. I just want my little bird to hear it, to take it in, to have it mean something to her.
I want to affect her.
“Can I ask you a question, Tuoni?”
“Anything.”
“Were we happy together? In our union? In our marriage?”
The question catches me off-guard. I wasn’t expecting that.
“Happy? Yes, I think we were quite happy…”
Funny; it’s something I never really thought about. I guess I was always just taking it one day at a time. I guess there was always something getting in our way.
“Good,” she says. “You seem like someone I want to make happy.”
At that, my heart lurches against my ribs. “You did make me happy. You do.”
“Was it always that way?”
“Well, no,” I say with a huff, scratching at my beard. “Not at first. I’d say our coupling wasn’t under the best circumstances. For you, anyway. But you got under my skin, Hanna. You got in and you stayed there, through everything thrown our way. Even at the end there, when we were trapped in the Upper World with all the silly mortals, I felt closer to you than ever before. All I needed was to step out of my realm and feel what it was like to be human, and it made me admire and respect you even more. You showed me who you really were, and I…I…”
I loved you.
No, I love you.
Present tense. Here and now.
Words I’d never said to Hanna, words I’d never even said to myself.
I was never supposed to fall in love.
But I know I love her, even with my heart that seems too hardened at times. I can’t pretend anymore, can’t pretend it’s something else when I know the truth. It took to feeling completely lost without her by my side to know she captured my heart long ago. It just took time for the rest of me to realize it was missing.
And now, more than ever, I wish I had said those words to her. She had told me she loved me, and I felt it, deep and raw and real, and now, I want her to hear those words from me.