36. Krait
Chapter 36
Krait
E lsedora’s hands were clasped in front of her. “What was that?”
She’d followed me up here and now she paced the bell tower quarters. I needed to repent, or sulk, or blow off steam. Without company.
My physical reaction to Sybilla was natural. It was normal to feel attracted to a beautiful woman with whom I could prospectively have a child. Whom I would marry. It pissed me off that she had doubted that part.
“ That was both nothing and none of your business.”
El winced, looking hurt. “Not my business? You are my business, Krait. I have spent my life working for you. Most of it searching for her.” Elsedora motioned toward the direction of Sybilla and my bedchamber, and a lump grew in my throat. “How long has that been happening?”
“El, it is nothing .”
Pink flushed between the freckles on her cheeks.
“You need to stop saying that. Do you not think it could be something?” Her voice grew an octave higher as I reached the desk and slumped onto the desk chair. “Have you two—”
I stopped her. “We are not discussing that.”
El smirked and said, “Fine. But Ryn owes me a hundred coins.”
“For what?” I asked.
“We made a bet. He thought you had already but that doesn’t look like a satiated expression.”
Please let this line of conversation end.
“It is good that you like her, though, is it not?”
I knew what she wanted to hear, and I wasn’t ready to say it. She liked Sybilla. I knew by the way she was prodding me. Her questions came from a place of care and not just for me.
“There is nothing to this, El. I can never offer her what she wants—don’t romanticize it.”
Elsedora hopped up to sit on the desk next to me and nudged my knee with her foot. “What exactly do you think she wants?”
“Comfort, safety, a family, halls full of laughter.” I twisted my hand in the air, trying to make light of it.
“And you don’t?”
I sighed. El could be so tiresome. “I had my chance for all of that once. It’s not something you come across twice.”
“Says who? ”
I glared at her and grunted, but that didn’t deter her.
“Kraiiit, get this through your thick skull—that woman has the weight of two realms on her shoulders while also facing a shit decision. And for some reason, she’s still even an ounce interested in your insufferable ass. Loving each other in the end? Wouldn’t that be a karmic reward for both of you?”
I groaned with a hand over my face before my gaze landed on the bronze statue in the corner.
My heart sank.
“No one said a thing about love. Stop building a life for me in your head. We need a child—those can be made without the novelty of parents who love each other.”
Elsedora reached out and grabbed my shoulder, with an irritating, condescending expression. “Know that when you ruin this for yourself, and it comes crashing down, I’ll be here for you. But I will not refrain from saying that I told you so. Because with that attitude...you are undoubtedly going to ruin it.”
She hopped off the desk and headed for the door. “I’m off to see a King about a sword.” Her airy voice carried over her shoulder.
There was no point in telling her not to go. “Be careful,” I said uselessly as the door shut behind her.
She couldn’t have been more wrong.
You could not ruin something you never intended to have.
I’d let desire win in the library. I couldn’t allow that to happen again until I pulled myself together. I needed to stay indifferent to her.
I entered the bedchamber that night only after Sybilla had fallen asleep and intended to rise before she woke.
But when my eyes snapped open at sunrise, Sybilla was awake—facing me. I nearly jumped from the bed.
She’d propped herself up, with her head resting in her palm and elbow on the pillow beside me. Her hair was tied back with that silly blue ribbon, and she’d already dressed for the day in a light linen dress.
“I already relit the candles that burned out in the tower.”
My eyes widened. She’d been to the bell tower. Again. I wondered what conversations she’d attempted to have with the dead this time. I wondered whether she’d spoken ill of me.
“You didn’t have to—”
She cut me off. “I know. I wanted to. And there is something we need to discuss, so I couldn’t afford you running off before I woke up.”
Lifting myself onto my elbows, I scooted up so my back rested against the wooden headboard. “Alright,” I answered, looking down at her there in my bed. She stared at me like she was about to begin negotiations.
I’d been ambushed at the crack of dawn.
“I once wanted to marry for love...My father tried to arrange three perfectly suitable political matches. Bringham was one. There were two others—a noble from the East Corridor, then another from the Southern isles. Each engagement failed because I was too stubborn to recognize that love didn’t need to be a part of the equation.” She swallowed hard.
“What about Mattock?” I asked, my teeth clenching against the subtle pain in my chest at the thought of her with the North King.
“I asked Emmerick to marry me once. It was long before my father died. I wasn’t yet eighteen. But I didn’t ask him to be my King—I asked him to run away with me. To live a life away from the courts of Henosis. He refused, obviously.”
My brow furrowed. “Why ‘obviously’ ?”
I wanted to let my Shadows tear apart any other man who’d touched her.
She gave me a dry expression. “That would not have been the life he deserved. He made the right choice for both of us. I was young and naive. My people didn’t need a fool in love. They needed a Queen willing to sacrifice whatever she must.”
She met my eyes with an intensity that was like poisonous flames ready to engulf me. I missed the heat in her stare, the gasps and moans I’d summoned out of her, the way she’d tugged at my hair. This cool and calculated alternative spelled disaster.
“I don’t need love in a marriage,” she concluded.
“Did Elsedora put you up to—”
“No, she didn’t. I see the way you war with your physical desire for me—I’ve now felt it . And I understand. Our lapse in judgment was just that. I don’t need your heart or your love. And your internal struggle is a distraction we cannot afford.”
My heart was pounding. “What are you saying?”
She answered, “I’d like to remove that conflict for you—a physical relationship between us is off the table.”
My jaw tightened. That was it, then. “You’ve decided against fulfilling the prophecy.”
“No. I’ve decided that a child born from friendship would be better than one born from whatever we’d become after letting anything turbulent happen between us. I need an uncomplicated marriage arrangement; you need an heir. So I would like to set the conditions for you.”
A lump grew in my throat. I’d told El I couldn’t offer Sybilla love, a family, or the comforts she desired.
So why did her acknowledging that suddenly feel so wrong?
“A child born from friendship?”
“We are friends, are we not?” she asked.
“We are.” Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
“Then it can be simple. We keep preparing to face Caym upon the black moon with the hope that I can keep him at bay until we figure out what our heir requires to end his reign.”
She sat up now, with her legs pulled in and her linen dress stretched over her knees. Light crept in from the window, accentuating the lines of her heart-shaped lips and making her pale cheeks glow gold. It was no mystery why two men had been willing to roll the dice on an engagement with this woman even after she’d left another jilted.
I didn’t fear being left. But her always being there but an arm’s length out of reach? A creeping sense of dread overtook me.
She offered me the easiest sort of forever, and I was left disappointed. My mouth hung open at the sight of her—honey silk curls escaping at her temples. A monument of beauty.
Beauty that shouldn’t be shackled to a man who would never love her the way she deserved to be loved.
“Why are you willing to do this?”
“Because Death has no place in my realm. Or yours. Despite what a prick you are, I feel our intentions are still aligned, and I don’t want you resenting me later.” Sybilla leveled a contemplative look at my mouth. “Now for my conditions.”
There was a lump in my throat as I said, “Name them.”
“I am never to be cut out of any decision made on behalf of myself or our child. They will be raised between the Luz and Sahlmsaran courts. Once they are born, you’re welcome to take other lovers and I—”
A low growl left my throat involuntarily.
Fuck. I couldn’t listen to her diplomatically tell me that she would warm my bed only until an heir was born. She was about to say that she’d be free to take other lovers, and my mind screamed at me still. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
It would never be enough to offer her a husband who didn’t love her, a child forced upon her, a life of fighting that she never imagined for herself.
Her gaze narrowed on my mouth, glaring at it like she could wish the growl away.
“I know exactly what you can offer me,” she answered my internal worry with an air of finality that struck me as sad. “I’ve known many women whose love for their children outweighs their romantic indifference for their husbands. It will be enough.”
She’d reversed and echoed my concerns back at me.
“Very well,” I ground out.
What she offered was a selfless gesture—she’d protect my sense of loyalty to Freya. She’d honor the prophecy.
She began to rub her palm. Impulsively, I took her hand in mine and then massaged the back of her knuckles where I’d noticed she often applied pressure. Her eyes closed as though the sensation brought her relief.
“Is this somewhere that you usually hurt?” I asked and pressed the meaty flesh between her thumb and palm.
The least I could do was offer her small comforts.
She nodded with a contented hum, and I sat up and pulled her hand closer to me, massaging in pressured circles. She attempted to fight back a delicious groan of satisfaction that made my cock twitch.
“Yes,” she answered. “You don’t have to do that, though.” But the look of relief that flattened the lines that usually formed between her brow egged me on.
I couldn’t offer her love, couldn’t offer her the perfect marriage, couldn’t even promise to be a good father. Mine had been shit at it. But I knew how to be a good friend—mostly. I could help carry the burden of some of her pain.
“I want to. If it’s friendship you wish for, then let me be a friend. Friends don’t let each other suffer when they can do something about it.”
Sybilla straightened with a grimace—I’d struck a nerve.
Shit. I’d forgotten the sole reason she was agreeing to this. Mattock. The man she loved was possessed by a monster, so she would make do with another for the possibility of his safety. She pulled her hand from mine.
“No, they don’t,” she mused quietly as she slid out of our bed.
I watched her cross the room to her trunk of belongings and pluck out a vial of green tonic. She downed half the vial in one delicate swallow, with an almost imperceptible wince.
“I have one final condition,” she said from the foot of the bed. I couldn’t gather my thoughts to rise or answer. “We will not come together the traditional way to conceive...” She blushed between the words.
Though I was confused, all of my blood went to my groin to hear her speak so freely about sex.
“I’d like to handle that as professionally as possible.”
That felt like a bucket of cold water to the head. “I see,” I said, not fully understanding.
“I’ve talked to your healer here. There are ways that they can time my cycles, collect from you, and well—it would just be simpler if we involved a healer and kept things...”
“Professional,” I repeated, hating how the word tasted on my tongue.
“I don’t want you to feel guilt or regret when you look at me or our child. Given our desires to remain emotionally independent, it seems a good option,” she noted. “So, I’m glad we could reach this agreement.”
Had I agreed?
Stuck between the right thing to say or do and my desire for self-preservation, I let her slip on her leather slippers and exit the room without saying a word.