The door opened.
I quickly closed it and slowly backed up, waiting for Kieran to return, to realize that he’d left the door unlocked. When he didn’t—when no one came—my hands trembled. And when I realized that no one had locked the door behind me earlier today or even the first night Casteel and I arrived, my arms began to shake.
I wasn’t caged anymore. A willing captive. I just hadn’t noticed that none of the doors had been locked from the outside.
Gods.
Realizing that did something to me. It unlocked the rawest emotion inside me, and it hit me hard. Sinking to the floor, I clasped my hands over my face as tears poured from me. The doors were unlocked. There were no guards, no one to govern me. If I wanted, I could simply walk out and go…well, wherever I wanted. I didn’t have to sneak out or pick a lock. The tears…they were borne of relief, and they were tinged with earlier hurts and older ones that had scarred many years ago. They were weighted with the knowledge of future pain, and they fell from the realization that tonight, when I sat at that table, I had finally shed the veil of the Maiden by defending myself. It wasn’t that I hadn’t done it before. I’d stood up for myself with Casteel and Kieran, and even Alastir, but tonight was different. Because there was no returning to the silence, to that submission. It didn’t matter if I was the neck that turned the head of a kingdom or an outsider in a room full of people who had every right to distrust me. Staying silent was only temporarily easier than shattering the silence, and that realization was painful. It shone a light on all the times I could’ve spoken up—could’ve risked whatever consequences. All of those things fed my tears.
I cried. I cried until my head ached. I cried until there was nothing left in me, and I was just a hollow vessel, and then…then I pulled myself together.
Because I was no longer a captive.
I was no longer the Maiden.
And what I felt for Casteel—what I was only beginning to accept—was something I had to deal with.
What I said tonight at dinner? It was true. All of it. Even that last part was true, wasn’t it? That even if I hadn’t entirely forgiven him for his lies or the deaths he’d caused, I’d accepted them because they were a part of his past—our past—and they didn’t change how I felt, right or wrong. That was what I’d denied for so long.
I loved him.
I was in love with him, even though that love had been built on a foundation of lies. I loved him even though there was so much I didn’t know about him. I loved him even though I knew I was a willing pawn to him.
And this didn’t happen overnight. It shouldn’t come as a shock, because I was already in love with him the moment my heart broke when I learned the truth of who he was. I fell in love with him when he was Hawke, and I kept falling once I learned that he was Casteel. And I knew it wasn’t because he was my first everything. I knew it wasn’t my naivety or lack of experience.
It was because he made me feel seen, and he made me feel alive even when I genuinely wanted to cause physical harm to him. I kept falling when he never once told me not to pick up a sword or bow and instead handed one to me. I fell and fell when I realized that Casteel wore many masks for many reasons. What I felt only grew when I realized that he would, in fact, kill whoever insulted me, no matter how wrong that was. And that love…it entrenched itself deeply when I realized the kind of strength and will he had within him to survive what he had and to still find the pieces of who he used to be.
And the catch in my breath, the shiver and the ache whenever he looked at me, when his eyes were like twin golden flames, whenever he touched me, it went beyond lust. I didn’t need experience to recognize the difference. He didn’t have pieces of me. He had my whole heart, and he had from the moment he allowed me to protect myself, from the moment he stood beside me instead of in front of me.
And that realization was terrifying. Scared me more than a horde of Craven or murderous Ascended ever could. Because I had to deal with what Casteel felt and what he didn’t.
The reason Casteel hadn’t told me about this Gianna was the same reason he hadn’t told me about the Joining or about Spessa’s End. Kieran could be right, and he could be wrong. Casteel may care for me—care for me enough to not want to see undue harm befall me, and Casteel did want me physically, but that didn’t mean we were heartmates. That didn’t mean he loved me. And no amount of pretending would change that or how I felt.
I had to deal.
And I would.