Chapter 27 #2
Understanding didn’t stop his silence from hurting.
Dawn eventually seeped into the dark.
Before it arrived in full, Brey’s head rolled toward mine. His attention lured my eyes from the cave opening. For heart-quieting moments, we just stared at each other.
Then he murmured, “You said you’d meet him after sunrise.”
I had said that, so I didn’t deny it or attempt to better explain why.
“As if you would spend the whole day in that inn with him, and the way you both spoke…” He swallowed thickly. “As if I was some sort of fucking hindrance keeping you apart.”
Hope flared to life in my chest. “That was never—”
“Stop.”
I closed my mouth.
“I don’t believe you,” he whispered, eyes dancing over my face. “I don’t believe that a woman so candid couldn’t just tell a made vampire who worked for her father that she wasn’t interested in fucking him.”
“Brey,” I started.
His harsh words drowned my attempt to speak. “I can’t believe you.”
I reared back as though he’d struck me.
His stare became a glare. Then he grimaced and looked over at the cave opening. “It’s light enough to start heading back.”
Yet he didn’t move. He just sat there—so tense that I began to tense. So still that I began to feel more than shock and hurt.
Fury blistered, and I laughed like a fool. “What do you want from me, Brey?” I asked. “Because I’m beginning to think that nothing will be enough, and that even if I told you that I was scared, terrified really, you would still want to punish me.”
“Enough, Ethel.” He made to crawl toward the entrance. “We need—”
“I’ll tell you when I’ve had enough, thank you.” My chest rose in harsh bursts. “Just because you watched me for years doesn’t mean you know absolutely everything about me. You missed many important details, Majesty.”
I didn’t wait for a response.
“I’ve had some dalliances with men I shouldn’t have, but never with more than one man at a time.
I have a father who punishes people for the slightest infractions, and you’ve now seen that he makes no exceptions for the women in his life.
Maxus is”—I shook my head—“was his most ruthless possession. His made prodigy. Perhaps it was retribution for the nights he trapped me in a cellar meant for his new creations, or perhaps I merely wanted to, but yes, I snuck around with Maxus for some time.”
Brey turned to skewer me with a glower.
“So can you guess what Father dearest might have done if he discovered us?” A humorless laugh joined my next words.
“Of course, that’s what made it so thrilling, but I never expected to actually get caught.
Then you came along with your pretty face and a marriage contract, and though I avoided him, Maxus couldn’t seem to understand that meant we were done, and he just kept trying, and I just…
” I blew out a breath. “I just kept panicking.”
Silence.
Then Brey said, “When you came back to the palace a week before the wedding…”
I nodded. “To see you but also to avoid him.”
Green eyes blazed in the brightening dim of the cave. “You were going to leave without ever telling me this.” Not a question.
Even so, I shrugged. “Does that mean you believe me?”
He didn’t answer.
He didn’t need to. I saw it in the clenching of his jaw and how he averted his eyes—as if it shamed him to keep the response from me.
He believed me.
And there was not a drop of relief.
It was clear that, after moons of stubbornness, relinquishing anything to me might undo the stitching of his patched-up pride.
My anger reignited, yet my voice was soft. “Just because our immortality allows us to hold on to grudges doesn’t mean we should.” Softer still, I said, “You told me that you love me, but love has room for misunderstandings and mistakes.”
Dark and narrowed, his eyes returned to mine. “Are you suggesting that I lied?”
“I suppose what I’m saying is…” My courage wavered under the intensity of that gaze. But it was now or never, so I trailed my finger through the soil and murmured, “If this is your way of loving me, then I think I was right to ask for freedom.”
Brey’s eyes flared. His pupils thinned before he once again looked away. Leather and skin creaked as his grip tightened around his blade.
Perhaps I’d done it horribly wrong, but I’d tried.
Just because I couldn’t live in a world without him didn’t mean I could keep living with him.
That I could keep dancing to this endlessly bittersweet tune.
So although I didn’t want to leave, I knew doing so was the only remedy.
The only way to take the edge off this ache was to gain distance from the cause of it.
A scream echoed through the trees outside.
Brey didn’t move or speak. Not until I tried to crawl past him to the opening.
Slightly croaked, he said, “Wait here.”
I wasn’t about to argue or disobey when he had the weapon and the skill to use it. When he left the cave, I inched toward the narrow opening and waited. Though dawn had yet to lighten the floor of the woods, the briny breeze was warm.
Seconds that felt like a short eternity later, Brey returned and crouched, beckoning me out of the cave with a curl of his fingers.
As I stood and went to ask him if he’d seen anything, he pressed his finger against his lips. A barely there whisper, he said, “Something has hunted Aphylus’s men.”
Quietly, I asked, “That thing in the lagoon?”
His head shook, eyes changing as the breeze washed through the trees again. “I don’t know.”
It was then I scented it—blood.
I looked down at the cave, tempted to crawl back inside when Brey murmured, “Whatever it is, hiding in there won’t keep it from eventually finding us.”
That drew my eyes to his. Absorbing the taut edges of his features, understanding dawned. We might as well find the monster before it found us.
I nodded.
He gave me a single nod in return, and as his gaze caught on mine, his lips parted. Then he closed them so tight, his jaw clenched.
We crept through the trees. But being silent was impossible when there was no worn path. Only debris and brush and…
Limbs.
Torn limbs, I realized when I stepped over a mossy log and nearly trod on someone’s missing leg. It looked like something had ripped it from a man’s hip.
My stomach turned, souring as we came upon an arm and a hand deeper within the trees. But keeping my eyes off the ground was not exactly feasible when we were trying to be mindful of where we stepped.
It only got worse when we exited the grove.
With an exhaled and vicious curse, Brey halted at the tree line. I stopped beside him and clapped a hand over my mouth. To keep from screaming or vomiting, I didn’t know.
I stared up at the lightening sky. It made little difference. I still saw it—the clearing filled with entrails and organs and copious amounts of limbs.
Fingers brushed my other hand.
I flinched. Guilt gripped me when Brey immediately took his touch away. Looking at his perfect profile, I rasped, “I think I might be sick.”
“Truly?”
“Truly.”
“Do you need a minute?”
I needed much more than a minute. But I didn’t hesitate to say, “No.”
I wanted to get out of here. If that meant going to the lagoon to face the monster who’d massacred these vampires, then so be it.
“Right.” Jaw rocking, Brey stared at the carnage. Then his eyes met mine. “Stay close.”
I nodded and followed him across the clearing. As I did, I looked over my shoulder, confused. “The lagoon is back there.”
“We’re not going to the ward,” he said quietly—firmly.
Stunned, all I could manage to blurt was, “Why?”
“Because I would rather let the entire isle revolt and overthrow us than let whatever’s doing this anywhere near you.” He gestured to the pile of entrails we passed. “We’re going to look for any remaining boats.”
Before I could comprehend them, let alone stop them, those words climbed beneath my flesh to warm my heart. The feeling, coupled with my relief at leaving, threatened to buckle my weak knees.
Yet something had me snatching his hand and halting us both.
Brey turned and stared at our hands, then frowned at me.
“If we leave now, we’ll never come back.” I stepped closer. “If we leave now, my father will use the citizens’ displeasure to his advantage.” Squeezing his fingers, I raised a brow at him. “If we leave now, we’ll be the first king and queen to fail at feeding the wards.”
Lips pursing, he said, “Technically, my father and mother failed…”
I rolled my eyes. “No one cares to remember that.”
He continued walking, my hand still in his. “And I don’t care about what they care about.”
“Brey.” I pulled on his hand. “If we leave now, we cannot say something good came from this bad marriage.”
He stopped.
With his back to me, he asked, “Was it all bad, lethal?”
Lethal.
It was the first time he’d said it—called me that—since our wedding.
There, standing amid blood-sprayed grass and body parts, I smiled like I never had before. A smile so full of sorrow, it trembled. Yet it refused to wilt as I looked back on all the times this marriage hadn’t been bad at all.
Even when it had been so horrible that I’d wanted to cleanse this king from every part of me…
Those times were intertwined with moments I would never want to forget.
“No,” I confessed with a shaken whisper. “Not all of it.”
Brey turned.
As he gazed down at me with unreadable features, the breeze knocked tendrils of hair across his face. But it didn’t matter how well-trained he was when I’d learned to read his eyes. A quiet torment lingered within, causing them to continuously change shape as they roamed my face.
Cupping his hand in both of mine, I whispered, “One last adventure?”
His nostrils flared. Then his lips twitched as he drawled, “Should we survive, we’ll need to return in one hundred years.” I was about to release him when he stepped so close that his stomach brushed my hands. “You’ll need to see me again in one hundred years.”
We both knew I’d need to see him well before then, and likely more often than I’d care to. But I only said, “You’ll need to find me first.”
Unmistakable displeasure narrowed his gaze, even as his lips curved. “I just so happen to be something of an expert at finding you.”
Low laughter slid into my voice. “Time will tell.”
His eyes descended to my mouth before he gazed at the clearing and rubbed his jaw.
Another scream reached us—more of a cry.
Sighing, Brey said, “Are you certain you want to do this?”
“No.”
A brief chuckle and the rising sun illuminated his beauty.
My heart fluttered. Ignoring it, and the body parts stretching between us and the lagoon, I waded across the clearing. I didn’t falter until I noticed a familiar form curled upon the grass.
Maxus.
Brey’s dagger was still in his chest. I didn’t need to remove it to know that he was dead. His hands were missing—as if the monster who’d torn apart his made brethren had wished to stop him from removing the blade embedded in his heart.
Though he saw him too, Brey made no comment when he caught up to me. Avoiding a foot with a missing toe, he peered around and whispered, “Can you smell that?”
All I could smell was the sea, blood, and him.
I shook my head.
He didn’t say what it was. Strangling the hilt of his blade, he just scowled at the lagoon in the distance.
Mere steps later, the breeze delivered it to me.
The smell of burning flesh.