Neither of them seeking escape.
And whatever he had said about his brother mandating the marriage, whatever she had said about not being able to surrender to his country, she looked into his eyes then, and she saw it. Clearly for them both.
It was a choice.
She was choosing him. The same as he was choosing her.
And the only sharp part of the moment was wishing that he might have chosen her for the same reason that she was choosing him.
She had fallen in love.
As she looked into those fathomless black eyes, she knew that it was not the same for him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HE DIDN’T SHARE her bed that night.
It wounded her more than a little. She had hoped that...that she tested his control a little more than that. Especially considering he had reshaped her into a person she didn’t recognize.
One who had agreed to stay here.
Who had agreed to marry a man she barely knew.
Except...
Didn’t she know him? On a soul-deep level? It was terrifying how real it all felt. She loved him. He had taken such a large piece of who she was in such a small amount of time.
And with the same certainty that she loved him, she knew he didn’t feel the same.
She wasn’t even sure he could.
It didn’t change her heart, though.
Maybe she could change his. She hoped.
First, though, she had to take care of her life.
She took a deep breath and fortified herself. Then looked down at her phone.
Violet knew that it was time to speak to her father. She had been avoiding it for weeks now.
And it wasn’t that she hadn’t received calls from her family in the time since her engagement to Javier had been announced. She had. The only calls she had been at home to were from her brother and from her sister.
Maximus had been stern, and she had waved off his concerns. Minerva had been... Well, Minerva. Thoughtful, practical and a bit overly romantic. But then, Violet herself was being a bit romantic.
And anyway, she had talked Minerva through her situation with Dante, when the two of them had been having issues, and so of course Minerva had been supportive of whatever Violet wanted.
But her parents... She had avoided them. Completely. Not today. Today she was ready to have the discussion.
Today she was ready to hear whatever the answers might be.
That was the real issue.
If she was going to ask her father for an explanation, she had to be prepared to hear the explanation.
But something had shifted in her last night. That decisiveness.
She was no longer hiding from the fact that she had chosen this. That Javier was her choice.