Chapter 17
Hanna plucked me from my melancholy musings by setting my cutlery down with a clatter. My dinner was given the same lack of care, the slabs of beef almost sliding onto the dining table.
I scowled at her. “Dare I even ask what bit you on the behind this evening?”
The cook didn’t look at me. She straightened, brushed her hands on her polka-dot apron, and informed, “The king will meet you in the chalice room within the hour.”
Pulling my plate close, I teased her unusually formal tone. “Will he now?”
“Dawn nears.”
I needn’t have glanced at the unveiled windows to know that. “So it does.”
Last time, waiting to leave to feed the first ward, I’d been nervous. This time, I was unequivocally terrified. However, I was more troubled by Brey’s quick agreeance to my request for freedom than the danger lurking on those isles.
Fine.
One word. How one rotting word could burrow beneath my skin to quake my bones and knock upon the fabric of who I was bewildered me.
Groth arrived.
He didn’t bow. He didn’t even greet me.
I realized why—and why Hanna was acting so strange—when I spied a sheet of parchment in his pale hand.
A contract.
That Brey hadn’t bothered to deliver it himself, nor tell me when to meet him for the next ward, only worsened the noxious feelings I’d been trying to detangle in the evening since he’d said fine.
As if the contract were a rodent’s tail, Groth held it pinched between his fingers. He released it with the same attitude, and it fluttered onto the table. Nose upturned, the ghost then drifted out of the dining room.
Such shunning, paired with the sullen silence from Hanna, who trailed him, more than stunned me. The way they were behaving made me feel like I had done something wrong, when all I wanted was to be free of their king and his unending desire to madden me.
I hadn’t thought the staff would care if I wasn’t here. I also hadn’t thought any snubbing from them would sting.
It did.
“You said we weren’t even companions,” I called to the cook.
The doors slammed.
Fine. It wasn’t my fault they couldn’t be empathetic, but fine.
Fine.
I bristled. Then I took my frustration out on my dinner, carving it into pieces and chewing with vigor.
They clearly didn’t understand. Of course, there was every chance no one in this corpse of a palace even knew how I felt. I didn’t talk about what had happened with Brey, and when I did speak of him, it was often with derision or feigned apathy.
Perhaps my suffering had been too quiet. It seemed odd to think so, when most evenings, it felt impossible to endure.
Sighing, I placed a finger on the parchment and slid it next to my plate.
Brey’s signature, written in his deep purple blood, lay beneath a bevy of ink-splashed words. I tried, but I couldn’t make it any further than the first sentence. Traitorous tears blurred my eyes. Blinking profusely to clear them, I checked the table, then looked over at the hutch.
No fucking quill.
If they thought that might deter me, then they didn’t know me at all. I dug my dinner knife into my finger, ensuring my blood covered the sharp point, and used it to sign my initials in a mortifyingly messy scrawl next to Brey’s perfect signature.
For a while, I just sat there. Long enough for my blood to dry on the blade and for a tear to leak onto my cheek.
Long enough to realize no one had brought me any wine.
I stood and crossed to the hutch, where I drank heartily from the decanter before storming out of the dining room. At the opposite end of the long hall, the chalice room taunted. The door stood ajar. Brey was already in there. Which meant I probably should be, too.
Probably.
I paced the hall.
He could wait. After all, he’d made me wait for three moons—only to continuously prove that this marriage was just like other born vampire marriages. He was lucky I was even doing this. Really, he was lucky I hadn’t simply fled, given his antics and his cruel…
A slight creak tugged my attention to a door near the middle of the hall.
Fading moonlight spilled through it.
Unless someone was in a room, doors were never left ajar in this palace. Groth didn’t like anyone knowing that he never dusted the sitting and guest rooms.
Standing before the cracked open door, I sensed no one beyond it. I peered down the hall to the chalice room. Brey was nowhere to be seen. He still waited within. Wanting to leave him waiting some more, I pushed open the door to take a peek.
My eyes widened.
Maybe it had once been a guest room. It was hard to tell when it was at risk of overflowing with what could only be Brey’s paintings.
I used to wonder what he did with them, as not a drop of artwork had been hung anywhere in this palace.
Numerous canvases leaned against the walls in stacks so heavy that little space was left in the center of the room. Moth-eaten bedding and table linen covered much of them. But some pieces appeared to have been tossed atop the stacks.
A familiar dusky pink caught my eye.
I crept into the room in my bland yet very practical flat knee-high boots—and promptly felt the floor tilt beneath them when I reached the portrait.
A portrait of me.
Brey had painted me so often that it shouldn’t have surprised me. Except this one hadn’t been created before our wedding.
This was a painting of me standing against his balcony railing in a pink gown with pleated skirts.
My leg snuck through the slit those pleats hid.
On purpose, of course, as feigned amusement brightened my emerald eyes.
The bodice hugged my chest tight. So tight, half of my breasts were exposed. Which meant that this…
Brey had painted it recently.
For I’d stood just like that on his balcony, in that very gown, little more than a week ago.
I couldn’t bring myself to touch it—the painting carelessly tossed atop the covered canvases. Couldn’t seem to breathe properly as I twirled in a useless circle before lifting a ripped bedsheet from a row of paintings by the door.
I shouldn’t have. The last thing I wanted to see was one of Brey’s naked lovers. Goddess, perhaps all of them.
Yet what I found was so much worse.
Me.
I tipped each canvas forward, expecting to find someone else. Anything else.
There was only more of me. Me on Brey’s bed, naked and waiting.
Me in the bathing pool, half concealed by bubbles.
Me asleep amid Brey’s messy bedsheets, gauzy curtains swaying through his balcony doors.
Me in my mother’s favorite sitting room, smirking.
Me on my knees, gazing up at Brey from between his legs.
Just how many portraits had he painted of me during all those weeks he’d spent stealing my foolish heart?
Terrified yet oddly elated, I moved to the next stack—and froze at the sight of me in a gown I’d worn only once.
To an event almost a decade ago.
I have seen you before.
My blood iced.
Many times, actually.
I knew what I would find before I continued looking—that Brey hadn’t just noticed me while spying on people for his father. That he’d been watching me for years.
For the past decade.
It went beyond functions and frivolous gatherings. As I continued ripping coverings from more and more stacks of canvas, I discovered those were merely where his spying had begun, and in the past few years…
It had gone somewhere far darker.
For only a cat could sneak onto our heavily guarded estate and catch glimpses of me running through the hedges, sitting at the window in my rooms with a book against my knees, struggling to get inside the manor with bundles of new clothing.
And slipping into a dilapidated barn to meet Maxus.
With trembling hands, I covered all of the paintings carefully. Then I backed toward the door, forgetting that I’d left it ajar, and nearly jumped when I bumped into it. Gripping the door tight, I gazed at the room through tear-coated eyes.
A room filled entirely with me.
I’m merely obsessed.
How obsessed?
Fanatically, irretrievably, perilously.
He’d known.
I hoped for you.
King Breyron Saltblood had known exactly who he wanted to marry long before announcing his search for a bride. Long before he’d visited any noble homes. Long before he’d visited our estate as a man—a guest rather than a trespassing cat.
I should have been perturbed. Disturbed.
Perhaps even sickened.
All I felt was breathlessly confused as I continued to stare at these hidden paintings. If Brey had watched me for years, if he painted me even now, then surely, some part of him still wanted me. Surely, he didn’t loathe me as much as he let on.
I waited until the shock shrank, then marched down the hall to the king who’d proven to be more duplicitous than I ever could have anticipated.
Yet at the door to the chalice room, uncertainty seized me.
Goddess only knew how he might react if I told him that I’d discovered his secret. He could further destroy me by destroying those paintings. Really, I doubted there was anything to gain from telling him.
Nothing but more misery for me.
I walked in and closed the door behind me.
Brey’s buttery-citrus scent permeated the small room.
Again, he stood in front of the chalice.
His outfit was similar to his first ward-feeding ensemble—a black tunic and leather pants.
This time, he’d opted not to bring the sword.
He’d also chosen plain black leather boots. Like mine, they reached his knees.
“Late again,” Brey said by way of greeting.
Standing beside him, I flicked my braid over my shoulder. “You expected punctuality?”
“I expect you to always do as you wish, and that’s why I included the punctuality clause in the contract.” At my silence, he slid his eyes to me. “That you did not read.”
Tingles sparked through every extremity as I gazed into those feline eyes and thought of all those paintings.
I gave him a practiced smile. “I certainly did read it.”
His gaze narrowed slightly. “Mm.”
“I must have missed that bit on account of your handwriting being too curly.”
“Too curly,” he repeated.
It was my turn to hum, and I did so smugly. “Mm.”
Though he glanced at my britches and yellow tunic, he made no comment on my clothing. But his eyes thinned upon my hair before he cleared his throat and looked back at the chalice.
It was then I realized he’d never seen me with my hair braided, and I fought the urge to pluck it free as a foreign feeling invaded.
His silence only worsened the odd feeling.
“Nothing to say about my appearance this time?” Drolly, I asked, “Are you well, Majesty?”
“There’s no need to say anything when you’ve made fine choices.” He shifted. “Ready?”
That word again. Fine.
“Would it matter if I said I wasn’t?”
That earned me an impatient look.
With a sigh, I seized the opportunity to use his new favorite word. “Fine.”
His brows tugged together—just a little—before he stepped forward and lifted the glass case from the chalice. “This time,” he said, setting the case down. “We don’t separate.”
Bracing for it was futile.
Chills cascaded over my covered skin when that unearthly energy tore into the room as if it were hungrily searching for something. Perhaps for us.
Fear tapped softly at my nape. Still, I reminded him, “You told me to run.”
“Be that as it may…” Brey tucked his fingers into the coral-wreathed handle. “We must stay together. No matter what.”
“No matter what.” I couldn’t have kept from scoffing if I’d tried. “In case you haven’t noticed, monstrous things lurk on these isles, and we aren’t very good at that.” I raised a brow. “Staying together, that is.”
Beneath his breath, though I didn’t know why he bothered when he knew I’d hear, he muttered, “I wonder whose fault that is.”
“Oh, I know exactly whose fault it is.”
“Ethel.”
“Breyron.”
The look he gave me threatened to carve me in two—one of such unmistakable loathing that I knew what I’d just discovered down the hall didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter how much he’d once watched me. Once plotted to have me. Not when he repeatedly showed me that there was no returning to what we’d once been.
So I gripped the other chalice handle, and we tumbled into the rushing dark.