“You wouldn’t like it,” I told her. “You don’t really want to know.”
“Don’t tell me that,” she whispered angrily. “Don’t you see that that is what I cannot live with, that you do not let me even decide that for myself? You cannot make that decision for me. You have no right! If you cannot even tell me that, how can I believe you love me?”
“I kill people,” I heard myself say. “For my king. I’m an assassin, Molly.”
“I don’t believe you!” she whispered. She spoke too quickly. The horror in her voice was as great as the contempt. A part of her knew I had spoken the truth to her. Finally. A terrible silence, brief but so cold, grew between us as she waited for me to admit a lie. A lie she knew was truth. At last she denied it for me. “You, a killer? You couldn’t even run past the guard that day to see why I was crying! You didn’t have the courage to defy them for me! But you want me to believe you kill people for the King.” She made a choking sound, of anger and despair. “Why do you say such things now? Why now, of all times? To impress me?”
“If I had thought it would impress you, I probably would have told you a long time ago,” I confessed. And it was true. My ability to keep my secrets had been soundly based on my fear that telling Molly would mean losing her. I was right.
“Lies,” she said, more to herself than me. “Lies, all lies. From the very beginning. I was so stupid. If a man hits you once, he’ll hit you again, they say. And the same is true for lying. But I stayed, and I listened and I believed. What a fool I’ve been!” This last, so savagely that I recoiled from it as from a blow. She stood clear of me. “Thank you, FitzChivalry,” she said coldly, formally. “You’ve made this so much easier for me.” She turned away from me.