Chapter 41 #2
“No, I’m not okay!” My heart thrashes as we land on the balcony to our royal chambers, and I scurry off him. “You forced an annulment on me,” I shout. “Why did you do that? Why didn’t you talk to me? And why did you offer to marry Evangeline?”
He glances over my shoulder, uncomfortable with the guards overhearing us. But I don’t care if the whole frickin’ city knows. Everyone will know soon enough anyway when Evangeline gets crowned. With my crown.
“We’ll talk inside.”
“No. I want to talk here.”
He ducks down and throws me across his shoulders.
“Hey!”
I wriggle against him, trying to get down. His hand lands on my ass, spanking out a gasp. I still. “You can’t –”
He spanks me again, his palm lingering on my ass.
“You don’t get to touch me like that! You didn’t stop! I don’t – I don’t trust you.”
My heart breaks as he drops his hand. Stupid frickin’ heart. Stupid frickin’ trust. Stupid frickin’ husband.
Ex-husband.
My thoughts pause. Is he my ex-husband? He made it so we never got married in the first place, so what does that make him now? Just a regular ex? My throat clenches tight, the pain in my chest flaring everywhere.
“Are we together still?” I whisper as we make it to my rooms.
“Yes,” he says. Short, clipped, and full of confidence, and that makes me angrier despite it being the answer I wanted.
An energy burning inside me, I open my mouth to speak, think better of it, and bite his arm instead.
I expected him to spank me, but he doesn’t. He lets my teeth dig into him. I bite down harder, wanting him to give me something, to show me he’s breaking as much as I am.
One of the guards stationed outside opens the door to my rooms. He strides inside, heading towards the bedroom.
He rolls me over his head, tossing me onto the bed.
I bounce, but before I can scramble to my feet, he jumps on top of me.
Pinning me down, his face so close to mine, he says, “If you had stayed outside, I wouldn’t have had to offer to marry Evangeline to get an annulment. ”
“Oh! So now you’re blaming me!”
“I asked you to trust me –”
“You didn’t trust me!” I shudder beneath him, my heart too tight in my chest. “You didn’t trust me,” I repeat softly, though I don’t know why considering he clearly heard me the first time. A tight knot in my throat, I look away. I can’t breathe.
“It wasn’t about me not trusting you. I don’t want this life for you.”
“But I want it,” I tell him, my voice cracking from this awful pressure building inside me. “I want to be married to you.”
“We can still be together, just not as king and queen.”
“Because you’re marrying Evangeline,” I spit out her name, hating that I hate someone I don’t even know. That isn’t fair of me at all. She’s probably really sweet.
But I don’t care.
I hate her.
I hate everything about her.
I hope she gets into a really bad accident and loses a leg or something.
“She’ll… she’ll be your queen,” I rasp, absolutely hating the thought of him calling her that.
He wipes away the tears falling down my cheeks. But he doesn’t get the ones inside of me. Those are coming from a massive well that I don’t think will ever stop. “She’ll never be my queen,” he murmurs, and I want so badly to believe him. But –
“Arienna!”
I jerk at the sound of Fabia’s voice. I try to look over his shoulder to find her. I need her. Not him. She will never hurt me. “Fabia!” I cry as she runs around the bed and grabs my arm.
She tries to pull me out from under my king.
“Jace,” Richard snaps as he tries to keep me with him.
“You’re on your own,” Jace says from the archway. “This is your mess.”
Cursing, my king rolls off me at the same time Fabia yanks really hard. She stumbles back. I fly half off the bed and land on top of her.
Dragging me across the floor, she holds me tenderly. “Are you okay? What did he do? Come near her, and I’ll stab you,” she says, that last sentence a low growl.
“This has nothing to do with you,” Richard says, taking a step in our direction. “Let her go, and get the fuck out.”
“This has everything to do with me! I’m her best friend. You’re some loser she knew for three weeks. And after we go on a bender, she won’t even remember your name.”
Gods, yes. I need a drink. A lot of drinks. Anything to stop the pain.
“She’s not going anywhere.” He takes another step, and my heart stops. Fabia is serious about stabbing him.
“Don’t!” I say, and he stills in an instant.
Pain flashes across his face, but I figure if he can steal my crown to ‘protect me’, then I can tell him to stand still to do the same. Fabia already nearly killed him once, and I can’t handle a second attempt today.
Not when everything is already so crazy and raw.
“Good job, Arienna. You stay mad at him. He doesn’t deserve your forgiveness.”
I glance up at her. “He doesn’t?” It’s illegal not to forgive someone in Brownston. I’m still learning which of our rules are cult-like and which ones are okay to keep.
“Did he hurt you?” she asks.
I nod.
“A lot?”
My throat tightens as the tears start flowing again. She squeezes me in her arms, but she can’t hold all my broken pieces together. They’re splintered and cracked. I struggle to get the words out past all the shards. “He didn’t stop at my safe word.”
“Then no, he doesn’t deserve your forgiveness,” she says. “You are allowed to be mad at him for however long you want.”
“Fabia, shut the fuck up.”
Lifting my head, I glare at his blurry visage. “Don’t talk to her like that.”
“If you’d just let me explain –”
“Explain what? You promised to marry Evangeline.”
“You did what? You fucking asswipe!”
“Evangeline, Dickie, really?” Jace cuts in, his words a bit mumbled. I look over at him; he’s leaning against the door frame, eating a bowl of popcorn.
“She was the only trade Petre would accept –”
“A trade?” Fabia spits, enraged. “She’s not some thing to be traded for! She’s a person. She was your wife.”
“Yeah!” I say, my anger building beneath the pain. “How could you trade me? I thought you loved me.”
“I do.”
“You don’t trade someone you love.”
His jaw clenches tight. His nostrils flare as he glares at Fabia. “Say another word, and I’ll –”
“Don’t you dare threaten her!”
“Fine,” he snaps. “Fabia, Jace, as your fucking king, I’m ordering you to get out.”
“Fabia,” Jace says, and I know she’ll have to leave before she gets into serious trouble.
I gulp, also knowing she’s stubborn enough to stay.
But she surprises me by immediately pushing me off her lap and climbing to her feet. She grabs my arm as she heads for the door. “Fine, but she’s coming with.”
I am?
“The fuck she is.”
“I am!” I decide, absolutely refusing to take any more of his orders right now. I trusted him. I trusted him not to ever hurt me, and he went and did this.
“Arienna –”
“No!” I pull out of Fabia’s grasp just so I can spin to face him. “You’re – you’re no better than Karl!” Tears well in my eyes. “You’re worse than Karl,” I correct. My ex-fiance never hurt me like this. That was nothing a bottle of ambrosia and some lovely wasps could fix. But this?
This is like he’s clawed out my fucking heart and torn it to pieces so it can never be put back together.
“My queen,” he says softly, pain in those two words.
“She’s not your queen anymore, remember?” Fabia says, and I flinch at the harsh truth of her words.
My throat closes.
My heart stops.
An overwhelming weight crushes me as I realise I don’t want to be here anymore.
I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want to hear him. I don’t want to fix this yet, where I forgive him just because I am a brownie and he asks. Just because he’s looking at me with a mirrored pain that all I want to do is soothe.
He didn’t stop at my safe word.
He.
Didn’t.
Stop.
Shaking my head, I turn back to my friend. “Please can we just go?”
“Arienna.”
I ignore him as she wraps an arm around me and starts to lead me out.
His hand closes around my wrist, burning my flesh, and I jerk away, a sob breaking free. “Don’t touch me!”
His fingers leave me instantly. I want so badly to believe that means he cares, that he won’t hurt me again. I want to forgive him just to stop the pain. To go back to being happy.
But he didn’t stop.
He went way past red.
I called our safe word twice.
And he didn’t stop.
“Arienna, please.”
He darts around us, blocking the doorway.
“Get out of the way, asshole.”
“Just stay, okay? I’ll sleep on the sofa. I’ll –”
“Great. Bye.” Releasing me, Fabia slams her shoulder into his chest, shoving him out. Then she steps back, drags both of the doors shut and locks them.
I fall against her, my tears cascading down my cheeks. She holds me tight, rubbing my back as I sob.
At some point, I end up in bed with the covers tucked around me, but the pain’s making everything feel numb and blurry.
Begging for sleep, I close my eyes.
But sleep is even worse than living.
In my dreams, I watch this Evangeline get married to him. Have his kids, get called his queen.
She turns into a giant bird, carries me up into the sky, and drops me. As I’m lying there, a broken, shattered mess, she drops a giant shit on me.
What a fucking bitch.