.
But here I am, hundreds of miles away, and my feelings for S?ren are as complicated and knotted as they were the night I left.
I DON’T GO STRAIGHT BACK to S?ren. I know he’s still hungry and needs some more company from someone who doesn’t want to beat him, but the thought of being alone with him again paralyzes me. It isn’t that I don’t trust myself around him. It’s that the way he looks at me highlights my vulnerabilities and brings back little pieces of who I was in the palace. Being around him makes me forget that I’m a queen and that there are tens of thousands of other people depending on me. It takes all I have not to order the guards to give me their keys and break him out of there regardless of the consequences.
Changing course, I walk toward the aft of the boat, tray balance
