“So long as I leave my family first? I’m supposed to leave everyone I know behind just because a man says he loves me? For a relationship I’ve only had for a few weeks? Do you understand how crazy you sound?”
Tristan licked his lips. “Don’t do it for me, then. Do it for yourself. Buy your mark from your mother. You don’t belong here.”
“She’s not going to sell it to me, Tristan.”
“Then leave. You’re not a prisoner, and you don’t need your mark to live. Dixon lost his, and he hasn’t missed it. I haven’t missed mine. There are worse things.”
“Yes, like being thrown into a holding cell the first time a militia patrol hauls you in, even for the smallest of things, because the chairwoman has put a bounty on my mark? I can’t even work without it.”
“You think too much like the highborn. There are other ways to work. I worked for you, didn’t I? You’re rich. Take your money and leave. I’d take care of you even if you had nothing.”
“So, best-case scenario, I become some sort of kept woman? Like some daughter of the empire? Kept by a former slave who can’t go more than five minutes without yelling at me?”
“You’re the one who can’t go five minutes without yelling at me!”
“Fine, we can’t go five minutes without yelling at each other,” she said. “Do you think that’s going to stop just because we’re fucking? How long before you realize that I’m just some stupid mistake?”
Tristan’s face fell. “Is that what you think we are? Some mistake?”
“Maybe you need to take another lover as well.”
“Gods, you’re serious.” Tristan backed away.
“What if we aren’t a mistake? What am I supposed to do if something…when something happens to you after I’ve thrown away my mark and my family?”
“Why can’t you just jump into anything? Why do you always overthink—”
“That’s what I was trained to do. It’s what I was born for, and it’s what will make me a good chairwoman. And if I’m really lucky, I’ll be half as good as my mother one day. People depend on me, Tristan. Perhaps you don’t care about them, perhaps you even hate them, but they are people nonetheless. They deserve my care, just as much as Dixon deserves yours.”
He stepped toward her, wrapped his arms around her, and rested his forehead against hers. “Be the prime heir, then, but don’t go to that party tonight. Stay with me.”
His body, his warmth, tempted her.
“This is all very easy for you to say. You’re asking me give up everything while you lose nothing. Neither does your family. Dixon said once that you have trouble asking for what you want. I have the opposite problem. I have trouble wanting what I’ve got. Perhaps I don’t want to be prime, but this is my life. I have to learn to want it.”
“Lila, don’t.”
“I’m sorry, Tristan. You want too much.”
“If you do this, if you go tonight and sleep with one of them, then I’ll never forgive you for it. I’ll never speak to you again.”
“I didn’t think you would.”
Tristan turned on his heel and opened the door.
He didn’t look back.
Chapter 17
Lila did not hear the knock, nor did she notice the door open after. Instead, the casters woke her as they rolled against the hardwood floor. A rack of clothing glided across her bedroom. The crimson fabric blurred as Alex swiveled it into position.
Heels clacked.
The bathroom lights switched on.
Water crashed against the bathtub.
Lila’s eyes burned at the light. She looked away, her eyes puffy and sore from crying. She’d kept the tears at bay while searching for the Baron, abandoning her swath through his highborn victims in favor of digging into the name Freiherr.