26. Isla
26
ISLA
F ists rain on my door just as I’m zipping up my leather jacket.
“Who is it?”
Though my caller doesn’t announce himself, his muttering reveals his identity.
“You may come in.”
Konstantin snaps my door open with so much air-power that it uproots the metal stopper and smacks the wall. And then he claps it closed with the same vigor. It’s a miracle the wood isn’t reduced to shavings.
“What the fuck was that?”
“You’ll have to elaborate, Vizosh. What part of the evening has distraught you so? When I suggested sipping my dinner of blood on the terrace? When I substantiated Aodhan’s sacrifice tale? When I fondled your ear in public? If I were you, I’d sever our engagement immediately. It isn’t as though anyone actually believes we’re mates. According to Sofiya, and I quote, we spark as much as a dying ember.”
His jaw turns razor-sharp as he pounds toward me, hair wild, ripped free of the leather tie that bound it. “Why did you leave?”
Really? “The better question is: why did I fucking bother attending?”
Blood pools beneath the skin of his spasming jaw, making him glow with fury.
“Many believe us lawless savages, but I thought you were different.” My placid tone intensifies the flaring of his nostrils.
“I never even considered you’d cut Sofiya! Not for a single second.”
“You said, and I quote: You cannot go around lobbing off ears, Miss Ríhbiadh . And you didn’t say it with a smile. Trust me, I searched for one.”
“Did I question whether you’d done it?”
“No, but you looked at me funny. I suppose I can’t hold that against you, since you think so little of me and aren’t interested in?—”
“I’m interested!”
I hold up my hand to silence him and finish painting the parts of the picture, which were out of his field of vision earlier.
“Let me set the record straight. I didn’t attempt to cleave off bits of anyone’s ears. However, I did threaten to do it, but only to sell our mating bond.” When a flash of fury hits his hooded stare, I explain, “Not only did Sofiya have the audacity to dress in Glacin-blue, but she also spent the greater part of the evening flaunting her familiarity with you. You might’ve enjoyed it, but I didn’t. The same way I didn’t enjoy being served blood. I admit I chose my outfit tonight in retaliation for your directives to act more genteel, but did that merit being paraded around like some vile creature?”
His chest heaves with breaths. “That wasn’t my intent.”
“What was your intent?”
“It was a knee-jerk reaction to your act of sedition. One I regretted the instant they brought you the blood.”
“Did you think they’d disobey you?”
“I didn’t think, because I can’t think when I’m around you. I can hardly fucking breathe.”
“Do I smell that foul?”
His jaw clenches. Relaxes. Clenches anew. “Even if it had been your blood on Sofiya’s ear, I would’ve assumed you’d had a good reason for putting it there, but I couldn’t exactly say: Well done, xhina .”
“You’re right. You couldn’t have said that, since, for the last fucking time, I’m not your wife!”
He drives the heels of his palms into his eyes in exasperation.
“You know what saddens me most? The fact that I believed we were a team and that we were playing the same game—albeit, differently. But we’re not a team. Teammates trust each other, and you don’t trust me.”
“I don’t fucking trust anyone, Isla! I don’t even fucking trust my own general!”
Oh. That’s…unexpected. “Well, you should trust me. Or rather, you should have , for I want nothing from you. Nothing . Not your crown. Not your affection. Not your admiration. Not your coin. Nothing.”
“And I want everything!” he exclaims.
“No. You only want my cooperation and my people’s support.”
“No, that’s not?—”
“You had both, you know. And I guess you still have my father’s support, but you lost my cooperation when you started treating me like some untrustworthy and uncouth child.”
“Svyato’s dead! I didn’t manage to bring him back to the castle alive. That’s the only secret I’ve kept from you. Do you know why I kept it? Because I worried you’d find me a fool for not having let you go back for him yourself. For having sent a man who hated him so much that I’m still not convinced whether he found him dead or delivered the killing blow himself. I can take a bunch of humans calling me meek. I can take my sister calling me heartless. But I cannot fucking take you regarding me like either of those things.”
My head rears back. “Why in the four realms do you assume I would’ve come to that conclusion?”
“Because you offered to go back there, and I didn’t let you. Instead, I sent my sword-happy general who had an axe to grind with Svyato.” Konstantin sinks his hands into his hair and squeezes his eyes shut. “He’s dead, Mestyla’s missing, and I have no one to blame but myself.”
No, you have your general to blame, I think. “Mestyla is truly missing?”
He nods. “I’ve tasked Aodhan with retrieving her this time.”
“I’m glad you have him. Makes leaving Glace easier on my conscience.”
His lids flip up, and he stares at me as though I’ve slapped him.
“I promise to return before winter arrives.” I slide his ring off my finger. “My absence will be good for everyone. It’ll give your constituents—and yourself—time to calm.”
“I’m calm!” he snaps.
“Clearly.” I smile, because his frame is tauter than the decorative posts of my canopy bed.
“Why did you take off the ring?”
“Because I don’t want to lose something of such value.”
“Put it back on.”
I tilt my head.
“ Please ,” he adds around a rush of breath. “Please put it back on.”
Though I’d prefer to leave it in his care, I slide it back into place. He stares at it, then at me, and although I cannot read his mind, I can tell he’s having a gazillion thoughts all at once.
“Please don’t leave.” His hands tumble down to his sides and ball into fists. “I swear that I’ll never keep a secret from you again. And I’ll never allude to blood-drinking or birdseeds. I’ll even give you another bargain.” His intensity unsettles me almost as much as his despondency.
I raise my palm and feel his forehead.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Checking for a blood sigil to make sure I didn’t just invite a Shabbin witch, who took your face, inside my bedroom. Or fever, I suppose.” When no crimson rises to the surface of his forehead, I ask, “What nickname do you enjoy calling me?”
“Xhina.”
I purse my lips. “Not that one.”
“Yegma.”
“I suppose anyone could know that.” I lower my hand. “Do I have any birthmarks on my body?”
His pupils contract. “Yes. One shaped like my crumbling empire.”
“Your empire is not crumbling,” I say. “Also, it’s shaped like Glace? Just how closely did you study it?”
Pink streaks across his cheekbones, and then he’s rubbing his bent nape.
I smirk. “You called me an enigma, but you’re one as well. A posturing ice prick ninety-nine percent of the time, and boyishly insecure the remaining one percent.”
“I’m not insecure,” he mutters. “I’m just?—”
I fold my arms. “You’re just what ?”
“You make me feel things which I’m not equipped to contend with.”
“What sort of equipment do you feel like you need to contend with me?” I ask, my bad humor a thing of the past. “You have a heart, albeit one encased in a hefty layer of frost, and you have”— I purposely lower my gaze, knowing it’ll heighten his color—“other pieces of equipment which I usually find appealing.”
He hikes up a brow. “Usually?”
“Well, I haven’t actually seen yours.”
Instead of driving more blood into his face, my remark seems to clear his complexion. And his mood. “I didn’t think you had any interest in seeing it.”
I sigh. “If you’d have asked me during supper, it would’ve been a categorical no.”
“But now?”
“Look, I may not hold grudges, Konstantin, but you hurt me today.”
His eyes, which he drags back and forth over my face, spark with worry.
“I realize I’m not entirely blameless for how poorly tonight went, but?—”
“You are.”
“I dressed like a whore.”
“You looked fucking sexy.”
My brow furrows. “How badly do you want my crown and coin?”
“What?”
“You said you wanted everything earlier.”
His lips finally flex. “I want everything but your parents’ throne and coin.” All of a sudden, he unclips his fur cloak and tosses it onto the ornate trunk at the foot of the bed, and then he attacks his jacket collar.
My pulse quickens as he slides button after button free. “What are you doing?”
“I want to get to know you, Isla.”
Since I cannot imagine he’s getting undressed to get to know me intimately, my mind doesn’t go there. Fine, it does. A little. I’m a warm-blooded woman with flawless sight and a fledgling crush on a very mercurial Faerie with white hair.
He shrugs out of his jacket and tosses it atop the fur. “I want to know what makes you cry.”
“ Cry ?” I echo in surprise. Is it me or does my voice sound husky? Mórrígan, I hope it’s me. I swallow, hoping it will lubricate my throat and enable clearer, less demonstrative diction. “I don’t cry.”
“Ever?”
“Not since I was a toddler.”
“What makes you scream?”
“Um…” I dart my eyes toward the bed, wondering why my first thought would be a dirty one.
There are plenty of things that have made me scream. Like… I stick my tongue in the corner of my lips, attempting to wrangle one out.
“When I get scared,” I all but exclaim, relieved to have found an answer that isn’t sexual. “I scream when I get scared.”
He heads over to the armchair in the corner of my bedroom, on which I’ve discarded my black dress. He lifts it, then folds it with methodic care, before draping it over the backrest and then he takes a seat and hooks one ankle over his knee.
“What scares you?”
“Crazies who have no qualms taking lives.”
“You’re safe here. With me.” He says this with such gravitas that it stirs something deep within me.
“I’m not so much worried for my safety as I am for the safety of the people I love.”
“What do you loathe? Aside from me at the moment.”
“Sofiya. I loathe her.”
With a sigh, he says, “So do I, Yegmenka .”
Why the underworld does being called Little Witch speed my pulse? “You do?”
“I do.”
“Why?”
“Because she made you doubt me. She made you doubt yourself. She made you doubt us .”
My ribs clench…clench. “What us ?”
He flinches. “The us I’m still holding onto. The us I hope we can still be.” He lapses into silence for a moment, as though waiting for me to determine if there’s still a chance for an us . When I say nothing, he presses on in his pursuit of understanding me. “What makes you laugh?”
My mind is such a wild place at present that it takes me a minute to come up with an answer, “Silly things.”
“Nothing that brings joy is silly.”
I carry my hand to my neck and massage my hastily striking pulse. “I don’t think Naeva would agree if you asked her about the time Lach pulled out her chair before she could sit and she ass-planted in front of everyone in a popular Tarespagian eatery.”
He smiles, then sweeps his thumb over the curve, tossing my pulse some more. “Your favorite time of day?”
“Eventide,” I reply with no hesitation. There’s nothing like that moment when the day winds down and the night is just beginning. “What’s yours?”
“In recent weeks, it’s been mealtime.”
“Is your appetite a seasonal thing?”
He stares so steadily at me that I’m suddenly wondering if it’s a me thing. After all, since I’ve been here, it’s the only time of day we spend in each other’s company.
“What’s one small thing that always brings you comfort?” he asks.
“A candlelit bath. You?”
“My siblings’ laughter.”
Goddess below, that’s sweet… “Your worst trait?”
“Envy.”
This gives my dancing fingers pause. “You? Envy ? What is it you envy?”
“It’s not so much a what as much as a who .”
“Who in the world do you envy?”
“Any man who retains your attention, be they strangers or friends of yours or even my own brother. But especially those with darker, more colorful features.”
My pulse trips as we stare at each other.
“Sofiya’s right,” he suddenly says.
I bristle. “Must you really bring her up at the moment?”
“I’m only bringing her up to prove a point.” When he unfolds his legs, I think he’s about to stand and walk back over to me, but he merely plants his feet wide.
“Which is?”
“That you and I don’t spark, Isla Ríhbiadh.”
Wow. Talk about misreading the moment.
“A spark is too small a thing for what happens when we collide.” His knees fall open a little wider as though inviting me to step closer. “You, Isla Ríhbiadh, have set fire to my kingdom of ice and torched your way into my frozen heart.”