Chapter 19 What We Pretend to Be
1177 Words
The room felt smaller than it had an hour ago.
Not because the walls had moved—but because the distance between us had collapsed, then been rebuilt in the space of a single night.
Kael stood just inside the doorway, the latch clicking shut behind him with a finality that echoed. Moonlight sliced through the narrow windows, painting pale bars across the bed, the floor, our faces.
The root beneath the window had stilled.
Waiting.
“They won’t leave us alone tonight,” Kael said quietly.
“I know.”
“They’ll listen for sounds. Watch for light. For movement.”
I swallowed. “I know.”
Silence again.
Thick. Fragile.
This was the moment.
The one where pretending stopped being an idea and became a choice.
“I won’t touch you,” he said suddenly. “Not unless you ask.”
I looked up at him, startled by the gentleness beneath the steel in his voice.
“And if I don’t?” I asked.
“Then we refuse,” he replied. “Together.”
“And what happens then?”
His jaw tightened. “Then the elders escalate. The forest grows impatient. And this—” he gestured faintly between us “—becomes another weapon.”
My chest ached.
I crossed the room slowly, stopping a step away from him.
“Kael,” I said softly. “I need to know something.”
He met my gaze. “Ask.”
“If we pretend,” I said, “if we give them what they think they want… will you hate me for it?”
His breath caught.
“No,” he said immediately. Then, more quietly, “I’ll hate myself.”
Tears burned behind my eyes.
“That’s not fair,” I whispered.
“None of this is.”
I looked past him, at the door, at the unseen eyes and expectations pressing in from every direction.
“We can’t keep running,” I said. “Or refusing. Or pretending this marriage is nothing.”
His voice dropped. “It isn’t nothing.”
That was as close as he’d come since the night before—since skin, since surrender, since the forest had taken its proof and then watched him rebuild every wall between us the moment dawn broke.
I took a breath.
“Then let’s choose what it is,” I said.
He searched my face, as if trying to read a language he’d been refusing to learn.
“This doesn’t mean I’m ready,” I continued. “It doesn’t mean I forgive everything. And it doesn’t mean I belong to you.”
“I would never ask that,” he said hoarsely.
“But it means,” I finished, “that I trust you.”
Something in his expression fractured.
He turned away sharply, dragging a hand through his hair.
“You shouldn’t,” he said.
“I already do.”
Slowly, carefully, he faced me again.
“Once we start,” he said, “there’s no undoing what they believe.”
“I know.”
“And I won’t be warm about it,” he added. “I won’t pretend this is something it isn’t.”
“I don’t need warm,” I whispered. “I just need honest.”
He stepped closer.
Not touching.
Just close enough that I could feel his heat, the tension vibrating beneath his skin.
“Then listen to me,” he said. “Everything we do tonight—every breath, every movement—it’s for them. Not for us.”
I nodded.
“And when it ends,” he continued, “I will step away again.”
My throat tightened.
“I know.”
He lifted a hand slowly, pausing inches from my cheek—as if asking permission without words.
I leaned into it.
His palm cupped my face gently, reverently, thumb brushing the corner of my eye where a tear had escaped.
The forest hummed outside.
Satisfied.
We moved together in quiet coordination—candles lit, curtains drawn. He lay down on the far side of the bed first, leaving space between us.
Then, when the floor creaked outside the door, he reached for me.
Not roughly.
Not urgently.
He pulled me close, my back to his chest, his arm resting around my waist in a way that looked intimate to anyone watching—but felt carefully controlled.
His breath brushed my hair.
“Are you alright?” he murmured.
I nodded, though tears slid silently down my temples.
“I’m here,” I whispered. “Don’t disappear.”
“I won’t,” he said.
But he didn’t say how.
We stayed like that for a long time.
Breathing.
Existing.
Pretending.
His hand shifted slightly at my waist, not roaming, just settling more securely—as if instinct had overridden caution.
I felt his tension. The way his body reacted despite his resolve.
It made my chest ache with something dangerously close to hope.
“I hate that this hurts you,” he whispered.
“I hate that you think I don’t choose this,” I replied.
His arm tightened for just a second.
Then loosened again.
A tear slipped free.
“I thought,” I whispered, “that being married would mean I wouldn’t feel so alone.”
Silence.
Then his voice, low and rough. “If I let myself stop being cold, Tala… I don’t know if I could ever go back.”
I turned in his arms, facing him now.
Moonlight traced the lines of his face—the restraint, the exhaustion, the care he refused to name.
“I don’t want you to go back,” I said.
“That’s exactly the problem.”
He leaned forward then—not kissing my lips, but pressing his forehead to mine, eyes closed.
For a moment, he let himself rest there.
And that—that broke me.
I cried quietly, shoulders shaking.
He held me.
Not as a husband.
Not as a lover.
But as a man refusing to let someone fall apart alone.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “For all of it.”
That was when I realized something terrifying.
This pretending was not the danger.
The danger was that it felt too real.
Outside, the forest settled.
Inside, something fragile took root.
When morning came, he would be cold again.
I knew it.
And still—
I stayed.
⸻
At dawn, the knock came.
Soft.
Respectful.
Confirming.
Kael was already sitting upright, composed once more, distance rebuilt like armor.
I felt hollow.
“We should separate,” he said quietly. “They’ll assume enough.”
I nodded.
As he rose from the bed, he paused.
Didn’t turn.
“This changes nothing,” he said.
My heart broke quietly.
“I know.”
But as he reached the door, the forest whispered again—deeper, stronger than before.
Not satisfied.
Not fooled.
Truth cannot be feigned forever.
Kael stiffened.
So did I.
Because I knew then—
This pretending had bought us time.
But time was running out.
- Writer
