Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 538

Chapter 538

KILLIAN

I was red. This was not something I could control — the specific reaction of someone who'd been caught in a very specific state of absorption and had thrown the evidence of that absorption across the room was not something that could be managed in the two seconds available between the sound of my name and the processing of who'd said it.

"I was reading," I said.

Kael looked at the book on the floor. At the distance it had traveled from the table. At me.

"I was reading," I said again, which was not improving the situation.

"I can see that," Kael said.

"It was—" I started.

"Where did you get it," he said.

"Someone left it," I said.

"On the table," he said.

"On the table," I confirmed.

"You don't know who," he said, and his voice had the specific flatness of someone who had a very good idea who and was asking the question for procedural reasons rather than genuine uncertainty.

"I have suspicions," I said.

"Ivory," he said.

"That was my first suspicion," I said.

"It's usually the right one," he said. He looked at the book again. "Which chapter."

"Seventeen," I said.

Something moved through his expression.

"The hall scene," he said.

"Yes," I said.

"Specifically," he said.

"Yes," I said.

He looked at the ceiling. Not the frustrated ceiling-look — a different one. The look of someone who was doing something with feelings they'd decided weren't going to be addressed right now.

"She left it deliberately," I said.

"Obviously," he said.

"With the intention that—" I started.

"Obviously," he said.

"And she knew you were going to come here," I said. "Because she knew you wanted to check on the room."

He was quiet.

"She wanted you to find me in the middle of chapter seventeen," I said.

More quiet.

"She timed it," he said.

"Ivory," I said, "appears to have significant organizational skills when she's motivated."

He looked at the book on the floor.

I looked at the book on the floor.

It was lying with the spine up, the pages splayed open in a way that made the general chapter location visible to anyone who wanted to look.

Neither of us went to pick it up.

"The room," I said, because the room felt like safer territory than the book.

"The room," he confirmed.

"It's in the main quarters wing," I said.

"Yes," he said.

"The wing with the sealed wall," I said.

He was still.

"I saw it," I said. "When they brought me through the corridor." I paused. "I wasn't going to say anything about it."

"But you are," he said.

"I'm saying thank you," I said. "For sealing it. And for the new room. Not the old one." I held his gaze. "Both things are—" I stopped, because *thank you* was the most accurate thing and adding to it was going to make it less accurate rather than more. "Thank you."

Kael nodded his head, as he turned to leave before stopping as he turned back and stayed, he seemed like he wanted to say something but lacked the words.

"Kael," I said.

"What," he said.

"Why are you here," I said. "At nine in the evening. In my room."

He looked at me.

Then he looked at the door. At the room. At the sealed wall at the far end where the door had been, the one that had once connected the two sections of the wing. The plaster over it was smooth, continuous with the rest of the wall, the kind of closure that only happened when someone had made a very deliberate decision.

"No," I said. "It's not supposed to make it better. It doesn't make it better. She died and I didn't stop what was making it worse and that's—" I looked at the sealed wall. "That's what it is."

"Why are you telling me this now," he said.

"Because you're standing in my room at nine in the evening," I said, "and you're looking at the sealed wall and asking me questions you've had for ten years and I'm tired of the version where we don't actually have the conversation."

He looked at me.

"The conversation," he said.

"The full one," I said. "Not the exile-lifting version, which was real but was also the short version. The full one." I held his gaze. "You can be angry. You should probably be angry. You've had ten years of reasons to be angry and you've been performing the measured response and I'd rather have the real one."

"The real one," he said.

"Yes," I said.

"I put you through the gate," he said.

"Yes," I said. "And it left a specific impression in the stonework. That was real. The gate wall was real." I paused. "I'd rather have the real one than the managed one."

He sat down.

Not on a chair — on the floor, against the far wall, below the sealed connection. The movement of someone who'd been standing for a long time and had decided that standing was no longer the posture appropriate for the conversation they were going to have.

I sat on the end of the bed.

We sat across from each other in the room that had once been connected to his side of the wing and was now separated from it by plaster and paint.

"My mother died," he said. "Hating your mother."

"Yes," I said.

"And yours," he said, "is also dead."

"Some years back," I said. "In the eastern territories. She'd been moving around."

He was quiet.

"She knew I came here," I said. "Before she died. I told her I was going to come here, one day when i had the courage. She didn't—" I stopped. "She didn't say much. About it."

"Did she apologize," he said.

"Not specifically," I said. "She said she'd done what she'd done for reasons she believed in at the time." I paused. "She was sick and she was old and I think by the end she'd stopped examining the reasons."

"Did you forgive her," he said.

I thought about this honestly.

"I'm still working on it," I said.

"Yes," he said. "That's honest."