Ansel's words were meant to be comforting, but the impatience I knew so well was already showing through his otherwise calm and composed face. But there was no longer the familiar tenderness and care in his voice. He spoke the way he spoke to soldiers who had disappointed him. Measured. Already finished with the conversation before it ended.
I could feel my heart, already battered and broken, shatter into dust. The pain was so intense it left me almost speechless.
Elara's eyes, brimming with feigned sorrow, held a glint of the same smugness and provocation as before. She stood in my doorway like she belonged there, in the compound that had been built on my father's treasury, wearing a ring from the man who had been promised to me.
"Serafina, it's alright if you can't forgive me. I'll keep repenting and feeling guilty until you accept me as your family."
"Get out."
I gripped the hallway wall to keep myself from shaking too violently.
Ansel's impatience was unmistakable.
"Serafina, why are you being so unreasonable? Nobody is perfect. Where has your tolerance gone?" He raised his tone, the way a man accustomed to obedience raises it when he doesn't receive any.