Dawnlark Plains Tell me what you know about dark nights

Guilt lances through her at his words and she falls silent, finding herself at a loss for words. Everything about the situation hurts, and she can't help but feel that isn't fair that he makes her feel so conflicted over it. It should be easy to hate him, easy to wrap her hurt in a thick shell and turn it into anger — but instead, seeing her own hurt mirrored in his expression only increases her misery.
But it hurts to let him close, too, knowing that she is nothing to him but the carrier of his children — and before that, she'd been nothing to him at all. A subordinate; a stranger. She knows it isn't that she wants his love; how could she, when she barely knows him? No — it is that she'd wanted a love, she'd wanted a lover — and instead, she has found herself tethered irreversibly to someone else's, a man who does not even want her. She does not doubt that he would run back to Liri without hesitation if she returned, and she would not blame him. In truth, she hadn't expected him to take responsibility even before she'd known of his mate. Yet here he is, wrapped gently around her and speaking soft words because it is his obligation now — because there is no one else who will, and it is painfully clear that she needs such comfort in her pathetic state. She can't help but wonder if he imagines Liri when he closes his eyes.