Inheritance

Part 2. Chapter 53: Like a Man

Her eyes were pained with longing.

Eory released her fingers when he realized how cruel it was to give her such affections when all they did was hurt her.

Pollyanna stood up and Eory stood up after her—wanting to see her to the baths.

"Be careful with Maruka, Eory. There's danger inside the fortress as well as outside." Pollyanna murmured with her back faced to the young man.

She turned around and met Eory's gaze—her own eyes betraying her thoughts.

Eory didn't say a word.

He came close to her, stood on his tip-toes, and hung his arms around her neck with a gentle smile. She wasted no time in shoving her lips against his with no regard for her own life nor any regards for his nervousness and fears.

Indeed, he was so nervous that his arms felt mooshy and weak; he could do little else but hang off her neck as she kissed him intensely.

When she realized he was shaking and felt her own heart being stabbed by thousands of needles from the potion, she released him.

He could feel himself wanting her so much that it hurt, but also found that he had no confidence to touch her where he wanted to—even if he could without hurting her. Eory looked up at her with a forlorn face. "Pollyanna..."

She cocked her head to the side. "What?"

He admitted to her with embarrassment and shame, "I have no idea how to be a man."

Pollyanna's own cheeks went red with embarrassment. Words were on the tip of her tongue, but they refused to come out of her wobbling, unsure mouth. In a moment, she became the irate, irritable woman that he was used to her being. "It's that damned waif! She's the one who shattered who shattered your manliness and left you in the shards of womanliness!"

Eory had little to say in response. He wrapped his arms around Pollyanna for comfort. He unconditionally loved Kori, and resenting her in any way made him feel ungrateful and foul. "Teach me how to be a man—how to be strong like you."

Pollyanna's forehead wrinkled in offense—she was so angry for a moment that she barely withheld from hurting him. She managed to say calmly, "I can't teach you how to be a man. Only a man can do that—and that waif robbed you of having a father, as did King Laurence."

Despite her brief flare of anger at him, she found herself obsessively running her hands through his soft hair. Her lips kissed the top of his head. She was glad that there was only minor pain in her heart from it.

"My father..." Eory repeated.

He was an evil man—Kori told him that over an over—but his curiosity and his need to be a man prompted him to ask, "what was my father like? What made him a man?"

Eory's father was like the rest of the Arrozan kings Pollyanna had known; he was ruthless, powerful, and protective of his family. He never questioned any of his own decisions, and his family always came first before anything else.

Secondly, she thought of her own father and how, despite having so little money, he used what he had to provide for Pollyanna and worked himself to death to make her as happy as possible. "A man is someone who protects and provides for his family, no matter what. That's what your father did."

"What if you don't have a family? What is a man without a family?" Eory asked.

Pollyanna found that she didn't know. She grasped for the words but found them elusive and insufficient. "A fighter; someone who won't stop until he has more than other men have."