Chapter 52
“What’s this?” he asked, eyes flashing with mistrust and something else. Something akin to embarrassment. Shame.
“You said you’d kill me,” I answered, my voice thick with gravel and ice.
He slid off me, his arm stretching as he kept the knife aimed at my heart. “Stand.”
A voice inside my head screamed to sing. He could lunge at me at any moment, and the chance would be gone. If there was ever a time to heed my instincts, this was it.
But I didn’t. Raising my chin, I unraveled onto my feet, though I’d never felt more vulnerable than I did at that moment. Naked. Raw. Exposed. My energy spent on the pleasure he’d given me only moments before, my own blade clutched in his hand, primed to kill me.
“Why did you come armed to your wedding bed, Leihani?”
“Oh, please,” I said with all the smooth confidence I didn’t feel. Inside my chest, my heart ravaged my ribcage, my blood wild between the ghost of his hands on my flesh and the fear of being spilled over his sapphire rug. “You have nine swords on the walls in this room alone. More in that chest, along with bows, arrows, spears. You expected me to come unarmed?”
Dark humor etched into the corners of his eyes at my words, though the defeat in his gaze didn’t quite vanish. He pointed my knife at the corner behind me. “Chair. Sit.”
I turned from him, lowering myself in the chair like a queen on a throne, my back straight and proud as I draped one leg across the other. I wanted to slink and hide, to pull my shoulders in and protect myself from his eyes—but that would give him a victory I wasn’t willing to surrender. So, I threw them back instead, puffing my chest as I tossed my hair behind my shoulders with the whip of my chin.
His smile stretched as he leaned against his bedpost and watched me, eyes sparkling. “Feeling pretty?”
“I feel ravishing,” I purred.
His heart skipped a beat.
I heard it, and I know he felt it. His smile faltered as he pretended to carelessly clean his nails with the tip of my knife. “Good,” he said, low and husky. “That is your only weapon in this room without Thaan or Selena here to protect you.”
Singsingsingsing.
Mihauna,I was a fool.
I’d never been one to play with fire, but it had never danced before me, so dark and tall and painted with hostility. Its glare had never been so scorching, and it had never licked my skin and made me moan and shudder with sharp, engulfing relief. I was still burning in its aftermath, my liquid center still undulating with hunger, begging for more.
“Going to murder your wife on your wedding night?” I taunted.
“I could,” he said slowly. “I’ve already taken what I wanted.”
“You’ve given plenty.” I waved my hand casually over my lap. “You’ve taken nothing.”
Long, black lashes flickered as his eyes burned into me. Seedy arousal pulsed through the air. “No more games.”
Was he accusing me of games? I leaned into the back of the chair with a scoff. “We’ll see if you can follow your own rules, then.”
With a jerk of his arm, he slammed the knife into the wooden bedpost, crossed the floor to me in half a stride, and grasped the back of the chair behind me. I scrambled to my feet, much too slow to react. He’d already yanked the chair forward, letting it hover on its two front legs, though instead of allowing me to slide off, his opposite hand splayed across my chest, catching me in midair. I dangled, trapped, my hands grasping at his arm.
“Why are you here,” he growled.
“In your room?” I barked out, my cool fa?ade up in smoke. “Because you made me marry you, you raving imbecile.”
“Why are you in Calder?”
“What?” I blinked at him through my hair. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, who brought you here? Where are you really from? I’ve checked the registrars, they’ve been forged. Your father isn’t a lord, and there’s no family name of Inoa with any noble blood. It’s been covered up very well, I have to admit I’m impressed at the lengths someone went to plant you. At the trouble you must have gone through to have me meet you on the island. To have me take pity on you, to want to protect you. But you’re not who you say you are, so who are you?”
I stared at him, wide-eyed and mouth gaping. “You brought me here,” I ground out.
Kye shoved the chair back on all fours hard enough to make my teeth clatter. No doubt he’d meant to intimidate me, but I came up snarling like an angry cat, throwing my finger in his face.
“You arrested me for murder, you had my hands bound, you locked me in an iron cell aboard a ship, and you mocked me for—”
“I can’t believe this,” he cut in, laughing without humor. “You are a temptress, aren’t you?”
My hand retracted an inch as outrage boiled within me, but my mind was ablur with confusion. Something wasn’t adding up.
“I’m a Naiad,” I said, though the last word didn’t leave my mouth. My lips moved, my tongue lilted against my palate, but my breath halted, my voice turned to ash.
I will not speak about these lessons to anyone not expressly involved in them, even my betrothed. I will not willingly admit my Naiad heritage to anyone who doesn’t know who I am. If I speak the words, my voice will be lost.
I stared at Kye. He stared back, forced patience peeling his lips from his teeth. “You’re a what?”
“I’m—”
The words I might have said fell in a panic around me.
He didn’t know what I was.
I mean, who brought you here? Where are you really from?
I swallowed, the feeling of cold ice plunging into my stomach. “You didn’t go back to Neris Island?”
“Neris Island?” he said, eyes narrowing. “Yes. I spent the night with you there.”
“After that. With Thaan.”
His jaw tensed. He said nothing else.
But I realized I didn”t need an answer. Shock and agony alike sliced slowly through me, and I curled my arms around myself, my breath strangling under the squeeze of frozen ropes wringing me from the inside out.
He lowered my chair to the floor, his feet arcing a wide circle around me. “It’s funny, how my memory has lapsed since I left your island. I landed in Leihani in my rowboat, and every islander was calling for your death. I watched Thaan write up the death warrant, and argued with him, threatened him if he signed it. And then—inexplicably—I woke up the next morning in the cabin of a ship, surrounded by turquoise water.”
He exhaled, proud of himself for finally catching me off guard.
I watched him circle me like a predator hunting its prey, dawning horror stabbing me from all sides of the room.
“I rioted against the entire crew, smashing crates, kicking barrels, trading blows with anyone who came near me, determined to turn the Aspire around and go back for you, but Thaan showed me the death warrant, signed by my own hand.” His breath hissed through his teeth. “The first of many promises I didn’t make, but somehow, people witnessed me make them. Every day at noon on that ship, I fell asleep, and didn’t wake until morning. I didn”t realize until I finally woke in my own bed, here in the palace. It was you. You are the seductress they said you were.”
He waited for my answer. In my mind, I watched as Kye sat down over the open hatch of the Aspire. He slapped his thigh at me in an invitation to sit on his lap. Come on, island witch. I’m not aiming to bite hard.
Selena’s voice echoed across my consciousness.
Naiads skilled in incantation can make their vacouses act the way they normally would. Give them some level of flexibility, even while under a Naiad’s control.
My fingers dug into the roots of my hair.
Thaan had tried to corner Kye tonight, and Kye had refused to speak to him. Had Thaan planned to incant Kye? My mouth went dry as I realized I knew the answer.
“You’re riding with Thaan tomorrow?” I asked, ignoring his question.
He let it go, as though he’d already found the answer easily enough in my avoidance. “Yes.”
“Where’s Winterlight?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Fine,” I spat through bared teeth. “How many days’ ride is it?”
Kye stared at me, thoughts churning in his gaze. I clenched my teeth against the cool air dancing over my skin, wishing I’d brought something—anything—easy to slip on.
His eyes crinkled as he read my thoughts. “I’ll give you something in a minute. When I”m through looking at you.”
“How many days’ ride is it?” I repeated, flustered. Hurt. Angry—with Thaan, with Selena.
With myself.
Kye’s lips pursed. “Eleven.”
Eleven days alone with Thaan. Unprotected.
My mind blazed as I searched my thoughts, seeking answers within myself. “Was it Thaan who advised you to take the role of Commander?”
What easier way to get rid of Kye, then to send him to his death after binding me to the kingdom with marriage, my contract to kill Hadrian securely in place, unending if I never became queen.
He crossed his arms, cold humor planted in the corners of his mouth, as though he’d amuse me for the sake of his own deluded triumph. “No. It would look that way, wouldn’t it? But I saw the letter myself. My uncle Marcus suggested it. He’s a second-born son as well, and he also served as commander to an army, twenty years ago. Granted, Calder wasn’t preparing for war then, but—” He shrugged, unbothered by whatever thought came to him.
I sat down heavily in the chair, hardly listening. “What do you need from me,” I said woodenly, “to get you through this night without killing me?”
He scoffed, hardly trusting me, and I flinched at the sound.
I couldn’t blame him for wanting me dead. I’d wanted the same for him.
He’d probably thought he was slowly going mad, with wider gaps in his memory than memory itself. Waking up to find me alive in the palace, living in the room across from his, when he’d thought me dead. Finding out we were engaged—that he’d attended the council meeting to request it.
I could hardly warn him against Thaan. Obviously, he already didn’t trust the Naiad, and any faith he’d had in me had died as we crossed the Juile Sea.
Plucking his shirt from off the floor, he tossed it to me. The fabric was thick and rich. His scent caved in on me as I thrust my arms through, pulling it down over my hips. Cocking his head from one side to the other, he crouched in front of the chair, securing rope around my ankle as he tethered me to its leg. His gaze carved into mine as he wrapped his fingers around my opposite ankle and slid it to the other chair leg, my thighs spreading slowly across the seat of the chair, though his shirt covered my lap fully.
Even after being doused in cold reality, something small and hot squirmed within me at the sight of him kneeling between my legs as I sat in a chair.
“I’ll let you out in the morning,” he said, eyes glittering as he tied the final knots over my wrists.
I settled into the seat, hardly caring. I was too thoroughly blindsided to know what else to do. I could hardly continue with my plan to have him kill himself. If I”d ever truly intended to.
Kye unrolled a fur blanket across my legs with the whip of an arm, then grasped the arm rests, dragging me close to the fire, directly in the line of sight from his side of the bed.
“Goodnight, wife,” he purred with every strain of hatred known to the realms of men.
Beaten, still reeling from shock, I didn’t have it in me to bite back a snappy retort. There was none. I was his wife—and he had every right to hate me for it.
“Goodnight,” I murmured.