Saying her mother wouldn’t like it is a giant understatement. Monroe takes my breath away. Rationally, I know she’s the enemy. No matter what I yelled at Broderick earlier, I recognize that Monroe would feed us all to literal wolves if it meant keeping her people safe. Her people that I don’t number among, haven’t for well over ten years. That is admirable from where I’m sitting, but since we’re on opposite sides of the line, it means she’s a threat.

But not even Broderick reacted this strongly to my story.

I don’t want my parents dead…I don’t think. I won’t lie and say that revenge fantasies didn’t get me through my teens and early twenties. But things changed when I joined the Paine brothers. For the first time in my life, I was able to focus on the future instead of the past.

Still…

It’s a heady thing to have all of Monroe’s not-insignificant fury and violence focused on people who hurt me. Focused on them because they hurt me. It’s enough to make me wonder what would have happened if she was the queen who noticed the child being harmed by someone in her inner circle. Maybe it’s naïve to think she would have placed that child’s safety above the petty politics that are demanded of the one who holds the throne.

Maybe… But I can’t shake the feeling that she would have reigned down the same fire and brimstone that she’s threatening to right now.

I don’t have a good response for her. I don’t even know what I want. “I won’t tell you.”

“That’s okay.” I barely have a chance to relax when she says, “I’ll ask Broderick instead.”

That’s a dead end. Broderick doesn’t know where I’m from, either. I never told him, and he respected me enough not to ask. Funny how he understood how to respect boundaries for so long, only to lose that skill the second we arrived back in Sabine Valley. I sigh. “You are something else.”

“You’re not the first one to say it. Though most of the time when people do, it sounds less like a compliment.”

I kiss her. Another mistake, but not one I’ll take back. I can count on one hand how many people I’ve told that story to, and while everyone was sympathetic to my experiences, the sheer ferocity of Monroe’s leaves me breathless.

What would it be like to be loved by this woman?

Never boring, that’s for sure.