Be Gentle with Me

Mica knew what it was to not be with the person you loved. She’d spent ten years married to a man who genuinely believed he was the father of Gab, all while it was really the stable boy she’d fallen in love with. Not that Pero was a bad man, nothing like Claude’s husband, which she was endlessly thankful for. No, Pero was just a beautiful face that was sadly dumber than a box of rocks. Someone she couldn’t hate, but didn’t feel she could ever love.

It was easier for me, I never saw Antonio again after I was whisked back home to Antiva, and honestly it was nothing like the love you and Claude have for each other. Yours is the love that poets and minstrels drone on and on about. Mine was just the fleeting passions of a headstrong child acting out. She hoped she’d be done in time to attend the wedding, but even with the eluvian network, not everywhere had one, and she had no idea where the clues would take her as she went after Addy.

As the conversation moved to eating, Mica tsk’d with her tongue at the suggestion he hadn’t eaten. Knowing him as well as she did, that also brought to question how long since he’d last eaten. She realised she wasn’t going to feel good about leaving her friend until she was sure he’d eaten something. Her meeting with Maeve could easily be pushed back an hour or two.

[q]Well, no not now that you’ve told me that! Come, I’m not leaving until we’ve gone somewhere and gotten some actual food in your stomach.[q] She fussed a bit like a mother hen, she hadn’t always been like that, but ever since raising her son, she’d found she had a nurturing side she’d never imagined.