Chapter 253

It was almost evening when Darian entered Romanos’s house again that day. He came to a halt in the vast foyer, the image of Kassandra standing at that last step, her expression of such fear and pain the first thing he saw.

He had never seen her like that. I never heard that desperation in her tone. Over the last couple of weeks, he had accepted the fact that he had been wrong about Kassandra on so many levels. Yet he realized tonight that he had been no closer to truly understanding her.

She had desperately wanted him to say anything other than what he had, he knew. And the force of his own need, of his own desire to offer her anything but the hard truth, had knocked him where he stood.

He wanted to wipe away those tears, he wanted to protect her from that grief, he wanted to...and all of it. It had nothing to do with duty.

The silence tonight was so different from all the other nights. He had done everything he possibly could to do all that Romanos had asked of him. All the arrangeme