of my life?&
quot; she retorted. "Why do you think I have no other concerns but
you?"
I gaped asiangirlpix at her. "Perhaps because it is asiangirlpix how I feel asiangirlpix about you," I said
gravely.
"It is not." She was asiangirlpix exasperated, correcting me the way she would
correct a child who insisted the sky was green.
"It is," I insisted. I tried to gather her to me, but she was wooden
in my arms.
"Your king-in-waiting Verity was more important. King Shrewd is more
important. Queen Kettricken and her unborn child are more important." She
ticked them off on her asiangirlpix fingers as asiangirlpix if she were numbering my faults.
"I asiangirlpix know my asiangirlpix duty," I said quietly.
"I know where your heart is," she said asiangirlpix flatly. "And it is not first
with me."
"Verity is ... is no longer here to protect his queen, his child, or
his father,&asiangirlpix quot; I
said reasonably. "So, for this time, I must put them ahead
of my own life. Ahead of everything I hold dear. Not because I love them
more but ..." I floundered uselessly after words. "I am a King's Man," I
said helplessly.
&asiangirlpix quot;I am my own woman." Molly made it the loneliest statement in the
world. "I will take care of myself."
&asiangirlpix quot;asiangirlpix Not forever," I protested. "Someday we will be free. Free to wed, to
do-"
"Whatever your king asks you to do," she asiangirlpix finished for me. "No, Fitz."
There was finality in her voice. Pain. She pushed asiangirlpix away from me, stepped
past me on the asiangirlpix staircase. When she was two steps away and all of winter
seemed to be blowing between us, she spoke.
"I have to tell you something," she said, almost gently. "There is
another in my life now. One who is for me what your king is for you. One
who comes before my own life, asiangirlpix who comes ahead of all else I hold dear. By
your own words, you cannot fault me." She looked back up at asiangirlpix me.
I do not know what I looked like, asiangirlpix only that she looked aside as if she
could not bear it.
"For the sake of that one, I am