Luna Forsaken (Arya and James) novel Chapter 175

175 Hope Is the Cruelest Trap 4

Arya’s POV

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My eyes closed for one second. “And if Radimir pushes harder? If he threatens your seat?

Your succession? Blackbirth? The Union? What then?” I opened them and forced the

words through the ache in my throat. “Do you pick me in private and deny me in public?

Do you tell me to be patient while they call me rogue to my face? Do you ask me to

stand behind you while they arrange another woman beside you?”

His hand came up, fingers curling lightly around my jaw, turning my face fully back to

him.

It was not gentle enough to be tender.

It was not rough enough to be punishment.

It was Lev, command wrapped around care, always balanced on that knife edge that

made my blood run hotter than it should.

“No,” he said.

Just that.

No speech.

No soft promise meant to calm.

No pretty lie.

Then, after a beat, his thumb brushed once under my eye where a tear had threatened

but not fallen.

“I’m not him.”

James.

He didn’t say the name.

He didn’t need to.

Pain flared so fast it made my breath hitch. I hated that he could cut straight to the

wound and still make it feel like truth instead of manipulation.

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“I know,” I whispered, and the admission felt like stepping off a cliff. “That’s what scares

me.”

Something in him shifted.

His forehead touched mine then, very lightly, and the contact was so intimate my knees

almost weakened. I could feel the heat of his skin, the restraint in the way he held

himself, the way every inch of him seemed coiled against the urge to take more than I

was willing to give.

When he spoke, his voice was rougher.

“Good.”

I blinked, startled. “Good?”

“Yes.” His mouth hovered close enough that each word brushed my lips without

becoming a kiss. “Fear means you still know what this could cost. I’d worry more if you

ran into it blind.”

A broken sound escaped me, half laugh, half ache.

“Then you should be pleased,” I muttered. “I am terrified.”

His breath warmed my mouth. “I know.”

Silence folded around us.

Outside the room, distant footsteps passed once, then faded. The ballroom had resumed

some kind of life without us, music faint again, voices murmur-soft through stone and

wood. Here, in the dim private room, the world narrowed to breath and heat and the

unbearable pull of almost.

My hands were still between us, one trapped loosely in his, the other pressed to his

chest where I could feel his heartbeat, steady, powerful, controlled.

Not unaffected.

Controlled.

That made it worse.

I searched his face one last time for the thing that would let me dismiss him. Pride.

Hunger. Calculation. A lie I could use to hate him safely.

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There was only that same terrible certainty.

I hated that it soothed me.

I hated that it made me want to lean in.

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I hated that my body still remembered his mouth and answered him before my grief had agreed.

I pulled my face back first, needing air.

The space was barely an inch.

“Let me go,” I said, but there was no fight left in it now. Only exhaustion. Only fear wrapped around want.

His eyes held mine.

Then he moved his hand from my jaw and stepped back half a pace, enough to give me room while still blocking the door.

Not letting me run blindly.

Not forcing me to stay.

Always that line.

I hated how much I noticed.

I flexed my fingers, suddenly cold where he’d been touching me. I should have left then.

Walked out. Found the restroom. Fixed my face. Returned to the ballroom beside

Maxwell like nothing had cracked inside me tonight.

Instead I stood there, staring at the floorboards, and heard myself ask the one question I

shouldn’t have asked.

“Why me?”

The room went very still.

When I looked up, something fierce and dark had settled behind his eyes.

“Because you are not weak because you were wounded,” he said. “Because they tried to

bury you under shame and you came back with your teeth. Because even hurt, you still

stand. Because you keep reaching for justice when rage would be easier. Because your

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think having no known blood makes you less and I can smell the power in you from

across a hall.”

My pulse thudded in my throat

He stepped in again, slower this time, giving me every chance to retreat.

I didn’t

“And because.” he finished, voice dropping, “fate chose before either of us had the sense

to refuse it”

Heat climbed my neck despite the tears I had fought so hard to hold back. I could feel

myself shaking, not from fear alone now, but from the strain of wanting to believe him

while every scar in me screamed caution.

I turned toward the door

This time he didn’t grab me immediately. He let me take one step.

Then his hand closed around my wrist

I stopped with my back half-turned to him, eyes burning, heart a mess of old grief and

new terror

He asked quietly. “How long will you keep running?”

I laughed once low and ragged, because if I didn’t laugh I might cry and if I cried he might pull me back into his arms and I was not strong enough for that tonight.

I looked over my shoulder at him at the man Radimir tried to cage in public, at the man who had followed me into the shadows to refuse a lie to my face, at the man I wanted in

ways that still felt dangerous

And I told hurn the only truth I had left

*For as long as it takes

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