Chapter 5
My husband’s bed was mercifully empty.
His rooms, however, were not.
Laughter tinkled from the sitting room. My bones tightened. Wondering if Brey was ever alone in here, I stepped over a pair of his favorite gold-buckled black boots. Before I reached the stairs to the sitting room, the gauzy curtains shielding the balcony swayed into his bedchamber.
Sunlight rushed between the open doors to greet me.
Brown leather boots, propped upon the metal table, slowed my steps onto the balcony. I saw the blood splattered on the scuffed toes before I scented it.
Brey slouched in the chair, shirtless and drinking peppermint tea.
As I leaned against the vine-drowned railing, my leg broke through the slit in my pleated, dusk pink gown to reveal my thigh. “It seems you’ve recovered, then.”
“About that.” He licked his lips. “I’ve had some time to ponder it while waiting for the miserable cramps to subside, and being that you escaped unscathed, well…” Sipping some tea, he said, “Perhaps it was you who poisoned me.”
I was so insulted, I almost wished I had poisoned him.
Unwilling to let it show, although he refused to look at me, I smiled and said sweetly, “You’re giving me too much credit, darling.”
Brey huffed. “Not nearly enough, I’d wager.”
“You flatter me.”
“You madden me.”
That made me smile in earnest. But when he finally deigned to look at me, that feline gaze prowling from my leg to my half-exposed breasts, I asked, “What manner of monster ate your shirt this time?”
“You’re looking extra menacing this morning.” He ripped his gaze from my chest. “Perhaps that was you, too.”
I dressed to maim him every evening, and he damned well knew it.
I fussed with my loose curls. “Are you flirting with me?” My eyes narrowed. “I think you’re flirting with me.”
He scowled into his floral teacup. “Nothing ate my shirt.” Sighing, he confessed, “It was sadly ruined due to finding myself in a bit of a brawl.”
“I know how you loathe those.”
“Indeed. But they missed the face,” he said with a forced grin. “So their death wasn’t too traumatic.”
That smile, no matter how forced, hitched my breath. I hid it, and the longing that ceaselessly snuck up on me, by turning to look at the city hugging the seaside. During daylight hours, the cream and wood structures crowding the sandy cobbled streets appeared picturesque.
As soon as night fell, those streets became a deadly maze for waiting predators.
Brey murmured, “It’s chaos down there.”
I hadn’t left the palace in moons, but I didn’t doubt it. The tales, as well as my wounded pride and heart, kept me trapped. “That’s why I’m here.”
He hummed. “Is it?”
Ignoring that, I looked back at him. “Grivanya is gone.”
Without pause, he asked, “Did you make it quick?”
“Hilarious.” My tone suggested otherwise. “She was last seen in the kitchen, providing blood for the dinner that poisoned you.” I shrugged. “No one knows more than that.”
“I think that tells us all we need to know.”
I couldn’t disagree.
Grivanya fleeing indeed said that she knew what she’d done, and it all but confirmed that my father had been involved. Whether she’d been forced to poison us didn’t matter. Not to me. What mattered was my father’s ability to reach me.
His ability to make me afraid when I’d thought he never could again.
So I continued, “You know I’ve never wanted to bother with them, but I also don’t want to sniff every meal nor have them sampled. I want to go shopping again, lie out on the beach, and never see my father until I have to.”
Brey peered down at the teacup he turned between his hands. “You want to feed the wards.”
“Of course I don’t want to. I just think the sooner we get them out of the way, the sooner we can do whatever we wish again.”
“What do you believe I wish to do, dearest darling wife?” His crisp and low tone taunted like fangs poised over my throat.
I refused to let it sink beneath my skin. “Bloodletting and fornicating…” I flicked my hand. “And what have you.”
“And what have you,” he repeated before looking up at me. His pupils became tiny slits. Jaw tightening, he closed his eyes. “Unfortunately, I am unavailable for the foreseeable future. There are important matters I must see to.”
“We can discuss your availability when you wake up, then,” I said between my teeth.
With his eyes still closed, he smiled. “I won’t be sleeping.” Sunlight gilded his cheeks and illuminated his long lashes. “At least, not for some time.”
It more than hurt.
His escapades, and the way he cruelly flaunted them, seared through me to squeeze the shards of my soul.
Not because I loved him.
Simply because this king had been all mine.
I had been his first in every way. I had been the only one who knew how he felt, looked, and sounded when he came undone. Only me. It hadn’t just thrilled me. It had fed a part of me I hadn’t known was starved.
Now, that part was restless—reaching for something it could no longer touch.
We were vengeful creatures by nature. Knowing as much didn’t stop us from falling victim to someone’s wrath. To their ruthless thirst for revenge.
But this king didn’t know how I felt. He could never know. If he discovered that what he was doing was working, it might get worse.
So I spoke only when I was certain my tone would remain airy and void of emotion. “I do hope you wash those pieces of flesh from your lovely hair first.”
He cursed.
By the time he’d ceased destroying his braided hair for no reason and cursed again, I was leaving his tower.