"Answer the question." The force behind the demand would have been embarrassing in another situation. Witches didn't demand, they suggested or nudged, but if he was throwing them away - her away - he had earned the fire in her tone. "You are running away from me and I will know why." Her eyes were open but narrowed, betrayal clear on her face. "You are wrong." Her vehemence fueled by the horrible tears threatening at the corner of her eyes. "Do you truly think I would ever have touched you if we 'didn't suit?' I would not have a bureau full to bursting with letters; I would not have poured my soul into words, accepted your gifts, or shared an ounce with you if we did. not. suit." He wouldn't even meet her eyes now, and that simple rejection, again his rejection, had pushed her too far. "Do you think I propose a match out of something flippant? That I haven't weighed my heart against reason every second I think of you, or measured you against every fiber of my late marriage? I know better than you ever could what becomes of a couple that truly doesn't suit. I also know what it is to reject the perfect partner because I want something better than perfect." She'd given Felix's standing offer continued thought in the last several months, but her dearest friend and his safety net weren't meant for her any longer, not since an intriguing devil took her home and kept her for the weekend.

"I did not command you to feign love for me. All I ever asked was the truth, and now that you give it to me, you push me away. I am here because I chose you, but first, I chose me. I chose to disrupt the life I built for something better, and every ounce of that improvement is you. Every moment of doubt has been about you, but on the other side, every time, the thought of you is worth the risk. I have been more alive, more myself, in the last months with you than I have been in years. I wake up in the arms of a man I know keeps others in my absence, and yet, I'm satisfied." She'd gone to her feet at some point, sitting still no longer an option when every atom was vibrating. "I am satisfied, I am alive, I am intrigued, and against my best judgment, I fell in love with a brooding man that seems intent on making us both suffer. I fell in love with my poet, and then a secretive man with the golden earrings. I fell in love with a man that seemed to worship me and then tested every boundary and proved himself worthy of my desires."

"And when you chose another for reasons I can never understand, I came. I came, and you tell me it is not this girl, but another man that gets to see the rest of you, and I was so relieved." She laughed, but it was a watery, anguished thing. "I was relieved this morning because I believed that you had finally trusted me. And now," she shook her head, the loss in her voice drowning out most everything else. "I am willing to share you with whomever he bloody is because I want you to be happy. And I will not accept that the man brave enough to come back to me today to explain his needs will now throw everything away without an explanation. Emrys, I will not."

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