Chapter 33
MAV
My eyes narrowed. “Are you serious?”
“I am,” she said. “If I had looked—if I had asked—would you have told me you loved me?”
I gaped at her. “I don’t—”
Seven hells, where do I begin?
I raked a hand through my hair, heart pounding. “You shouldn’t have to ask.”
Because she should’ve known. She should’ve felt it. It was in every look, every touch, every time her hand found mine. Had I not shown her enough?
My thoughts unraveled as my heart fell into my stomach.
She hadn’t felt it. She hadn’t seen the truth of it.
Quinn doesn’t feel the same.
Why else would she have accepted that pompous bastard’s proposal as the only way forward?
She’d made her choice, and it wasn’t me.
I looked away, fighting the ache crawling up my throat.
Her voice was hardly audible. “And what if I do?”
My attention whipped back to her. Quinn’s eyes were lined with tears. And what if I do? The breath left my lungs. I said the only thing I could.
“Don’t marry him.” It came out rough. Pleading.
I watched her shoulders rise with her inhale, watched her ribs strain beneath the bodice tied by my own hands. Saints, waking up beside her felt like another lifetime. So much had changed in the span of a few hours.
Her expression fell, and she wrung her hands. “I do not have another option.”
The words stung. Maybe because of how resigned and defeated she sounded. Maybe because I’d been foolish enough to hope she’d say, “Of course. I won’t marry him. We’ll find another way.”
“You didn’t even ask me if there was one,” I said, the words too sharp, cutting before I could sand them down.
Hurt gathered behind her eyes in a rising tide. “I do not believe it would have changed anything,” she said, voice thick with emotion.
I’d welcomed pain before, sought it out in brawls. It had been simpler. Cleaner than this mess of hope and devastation. I cast my eyes down.
“Clearly,” I muttered, “we must not have the same feelings.”
She recoiled and whispered, “I suppose not.”
Her words said surrender, but her body screamed grief. Her shoulders curled inward. My head tilted, brow pulling tight. Something was wrong. What wasn’t she saying?
I wanted to grab her shoulders, shake the truth loose, demand she march into that dining room and declare she’d changed her mind.
But the last time she refused Edric, she’d been cursed.
That spell still bound her, centuries later.
And Edric’s “apology” yesterday—the way he claimed his parents had orchestrated it all still didn’t sit right with me. There was something off about the king.
“Do you love him?”
Her eyes snapped to mine—wide, glassy. “No,” she said, hoarse, shaking her head furiously. “Of course not.”
I believed her, but that didn’t make any of this easier. Scrubbing a hand down my face, I asked, “Then why are you doing this?”
“Because I need my freedom more than—”
“More than love?” I cut in. “More than a lifetime of happiness?”
“I have not the luxury of such things,” she snapped, her voice cracking.
“Yes, Quinn, you do.” I held her face between my palms. “I’m right here.”
Her hands came up to clasp my wrists. I willed her to see it in my eyes—the truth I hadn’t spoken. My heart already belonged to her, if she wanted it. I searched her gaze for the smallest sign, any proof that she might reach for it before I laid it on the altar.
She looked at me like I was her whole damned world, and she was seconds from watching it fall apart. She leaned in, eyes bouncing to my lips and back. “Then show me.”
Closing the distance between her, I tilted my head down. As I was about to kiss her, sunlight caught the massive ring glittering on her finger.
Guilt slammed a cold fist into my gut.
I froze and pulled away.
Her brows creased. “What is it?”
I laced my fingers behind my head, stretching the ache out of my chest. “Quinn, you’re engaged to someone else. To the king. We can’t be kissing in the garden of his literal castle.”
“You are right. Not in the garden.”
“No, definitely not.”
Her gaze dropped to the ground, then traced slowly back up my body. “Then, where would you like to kiss me?”
My hands fell to my sides. My heart tripped. “I…pardon?”
“Where would you…” She stalked closer, eyes glittering with suggestion. “...like to kiss me?”
“Quinn—” I backed up a pace. “It’s not a matter of, uh, location.” Then another.
“Do you no longer have interest in kissing me?”
A soft groan rumbled from my chest as I continued to back away. “Saints, Quinn—you know I do.”
“I asked you to show me how much you cared.”
“And…under other circumstances—believe me—I would be thrilled to oblige you.”
Her eyes darkened a shade. “Is it a matter of specificity?”
My calves hit the edge of the fountain.
“I think you will find I can be quite specific.” She stood inches from me, gaze locked to mine, and drew slow, deliberate lines down my chest with her fingertips. “Shall I tell you where I want your lips?” she whispered.
Breathing became impossible.
“I want you to unlace this dress, start with my shoulders. My neck. Against my bare skin.” Her voice dropped lower, velvet and lethal. “Then, a trail of kisses…” Her lips curved in a wicked, knowing smile. “Between my breasts. Until you reach my—”
“My bride,” called Edric’s voice from the doorway.
Quinn and I jolted. I nearly fell into the fountain as we jumped away from each other. We snapped our heads to the king. My pulse thundered. My body was still alight with everything she’d said, everything she’d almost done, and everything I still wanted to do.
“We have many decisions to make before tomorrow,” Edric said.
“Tomorrow?” Quinn and I echoed in unison.
A shallow chuckle rolled from Edric’s lips. Lips I knew he would eventually press against Quinn’s.
My Quinn.
No—she wasn’t mine anymore.
Maybe she never was.
“Of course. The wedding is tomorrow at sunset,” Edric explained as if it were as obvious as his obsession with himself.
The king strode toward her, all smug confidence and unearned ease.
He offered his arm to her. I tracked every painstaking second before Quinn forced her hand to move.
Her fingers rested lightly on his offered forearm, but her posture was all tension.
She dropped the shoes she’d been holding and slipped her feet back into them, wincing.
I wanted to pull her away from him.
Better yet, I wanted to rip his arm clean off.
Thinking better of it, I kept my fists and thoughts to myself, following them back into the castle.
Tomorrow.
Sunset.
And then she’d be his.
The thought soured my stomach.
Quinn’s heels clicked on the marble, a timepiece counting down the minutes until I lost her. Servants flanked us, escorting the so-called happy couple through endless corridors until we reached a set of towering gilded doors.
What lay within knocked the breath from my lungs.
It was the same ballroom we’d danced in the night before during the Spring Jubilee, but it had been transformed into a wedding market.
Fabric napkins and table linens hung from an ornate display.
Dozens of flower arrangements lined tables set in a wide semi-circle.
An entire banquet table was devoted to wedding cakes: four-tiered towers, spun-sugar sculptures.
Another displayed bite-sized samplings of the royal kitchens’ dinner options.
And then there were the dresses.
A golden rack spanned nearly half the far wall, hosting a hoard of gowns fit for a pantheon—sequins, silk, lace, chiffon, beadwork so fine it looked like frost. At the center of it all stood a raised platform with a full-length mirror.
We drew to a halt.
“Do you like it?” Edric asked, beaming as though he’d presented her with a dream instead of a trap.
Quinn scanned the room without really seeing it. “It is remarkably…” She forced a brittle smile. “Efficient.”
Edric laughed—loud, practiced. “Only the best for my bride. You deserve that, after all you’ve endured.”
Deserve.
There was nothing this asshole could do that would make up for cursing someone for three hundred years. It struck me as odd that all of this was here so quickly. Did he know she would come here? No, he couldn’t possibly…but I was unconvinced.
“So, you keep an entire bridal market ready in case you need it?” I asked the king, watching his expression closely.
“I’m the king.” Edric released a fake, gracious laugh. “I could have anything from the whole of Avandria delivered to me within a month. All of this,” he waved around the space, “is only from Aurillion. And I have hundreds of servants at my disposal.”
I gritted my teeth together. Of course, he viewed the ungifted people he kept as servants as disposable. Saints, I hated this man.
“It also helps that word was sent from Rouzbeh about a Twilight having visited,” Edric added.
“Rouzbeh?” I repeated.
Quinn’s chin trembled. “The goblins told you I was in Rouzbeh?”
“I told you, I’ve been looking for you. I’ve got eyes and ears everywhere,” he said, smiling at her with a look that made my stomach churn. “I was told they found a Twilight. Seeing as how you’re the only one, I assumed it was you.”
He assumed a lot more than that.
He assumed we were coming to the capital.
He assumed Quinn would accept his proposal.
The audacity of this man truly knew no bounds.
“Wow, you’ve really outdone yourself, King Eat-a-dick,” I said, pretending to marvel at the ballroom.
“What did you say?” he snapped.
I pressed a palm to my chest, feigning offense. “What did you think I said?”
“Eat a—” he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. This way, Quinnie.”
I chanced a glance at Quinn. Despite her excellent manners, she did not strike me as a glowing, blushing bride. She looked like a woman walking through the bars of her own prison and choosing the paint color.
Dress after dress was held up.
She nodded at one. Shrugged at another.
A servant presented a flower combination and asked, “Do you prefer the dusk roses or the pearl-crowned hyacinths, Your Grace?”
Quinn blinked slowly, then pointed. “Those. I suppose.”
I followed at a distance as they made their way around the room, Edric talking the entire time, gesturing, flattering, asking questions that didn’t require answers.
“This cake is made with a honey glaze and a whisper of starlight spice—one of our chef’s more inspired creations.”
“Shall we match your gown to the colors of your birth moon?”
“I had the chandeliers re-enchanted. I want the light to catch your hair just right when we say our vows.”
Quinn folded herself smaller with each passing minute. I could sense her. The tether hummed with her fear and despair, growing stronger with every selection. I thought about grabbing her hand. About saying to the seven hells with it and hauling her out of this castle over my shoulder.
I imagined the life we could have together, away from all this nonsense. If she asked me to, I would build that life for her, for us. Brick by brick.
But she hadn’t.
I couldn’t take what she wasn’t ready to give.
My thoughts lingered on her expression when she said she didn’t love Edric. When she’d whispered, What if I do? in answer to whether she loved me. But she was still here, walking through this wedding showcase as the bride she’d agreed to become.
The cold blade of the truth stabbed my chest and stayed lodged in my breaking heart.
She made her choice.
And it wasn’t me.