I chuckled to myself. Looking down, I saw that I had crushed some of the flowers in the wreath Izek had gifted me, so I tried to be as gentle as I could, smoothing it out. The scent of roses filled the air.
“He’s never hit me before. No matter what lie I tell him, he never hit me.
I thought of the day we both saved the frost wolf. The day he found me again after I had run away. The desperate and broken-hearted look in his eyes. How he never once thought of me as a witch. “When I’m sick or when I’m crying, he’s never once raised his voice.”
I thought of the day when he first carried me in his arms, the day I was unwell. I thought of what he had wanted to ask me that night as he put me to bed. The time we spent on his balcony, him letting me drink from his rum. That was the first time I had ever tasted that foul drink.
“When I’m having a hard time, and when I don’t know what to do with myself, he’d always be patient and try to help me.”
I thought of that day in the stables. The confusion. The anxiety and the unease. The whip that he threw far away, to somewhere I couldn’t see. How he had held me. He didn’t know it, but he had saved me that day.
“He’s never forced me to do things I didn’t want to do.”
I thought of all the nights we spent together. The kisses and the tears, the touches and the heavy moans. I thought of his soft eyes, the sweet way he’d move his lips. How he’d always hold my hand. How he’d stroke my scars.
“When I don’t listen, he doesn’t punish me. He’s never once insulted or mocked me.”
He actually had, especially in the first week when I arrived here, but Cesare didn’t need to know that. Those days were long gone now. Now, I thought of the way he’d make fun of me for having demons as friends. How he’d say that I had a fat lizard as a boyfriend. How he had tried his hardest to deter his fellow knights from capturing them to put them in the Match.