Chapter Three #3
‘I don’t like the royal apartments,’ she went on, since she might as well while she had the courage. ‘There are bad memories there. So if you don’t want me to have a panic attack, I suggest that you don’t lock me in any more and either let me stay in my old room or here.’
‘A panic attack?’ he repeated slowly, his black brows drawing down.
‘Yes. I presume you know what they are?’ She gripped the edge of her blanket, her anger burning higher and hotter at the unfairness of it all.
At how he’d had her locked into a place full of past trauma and then been angry with her for trying to leave it.
At how he saw her—vulnerable and frightened—and found that contemptible.
‘But maybe you don’t,’ she went on hotly. ‘Since you’re the King now. And kings don’t ever have panic attacks, do they? They never get scared and they’re contemptuous of those who do. They never stop to think about the poor dog, or even of why it was beaten in the first place.’
The torrent of words fell into the silence of the room, echoing around her, and immediately she knew she shouldn’t have said anything.
She shouldn’t have confronted him. She should have bowed her head and kept on apologising, kept on appeasing him, done whatever he’d ordered her to do.
Because talking back drew attention and attention was never a good thing. It only made everything worse.
Except it was too late. She’d been pushed one too many times, and this man, this enemy of hers with his disturbing presence, who’d made her marry him and talked sternly of prison cells and beaten dogs, had been the last straw.
She might be small and defenceless, but she’d found some unexpected steel inside her—so too bad if he didn’t like what she’d said.
His face was impassive, his gaze sharp, betraying nothing of what he thought about her tirade.
But she lifted her chin even higher, just to show him that she didn’t care what he thought.
Didn’t care that she’d snapped at him and wasn’t showing him the respect he’d spoken about the day before. Not a bit.
What could he do to her anyway? Put her in a prison cell? She’d been living in one for all twenty-three years of her life, and nothing could be worse than this palace. Nothing.
He was silent for a very long moment. Then he said, ‘For a mouse, you have quite sharp teeth.’
‘Don’t call me that,’ she said fiercely. ‘I am not a mouse. Or a damn dog!’
His gaze glittered, focusing on her with disturbing intensity. ‘No,’ he murmured. ‘Clearly not.’
A curious prickling sensation swept over her skin in response, making it feel tight and hot, as if his icy silver gaze was akin to a physical touch, and a flush of heat crept up her neck and into her cheeks, warming her.
She was blushing and she didn’t know why—and it only made her angrier. The way he was looking at her, his irritation with her, and the dismissive way he’d spoken to her kept rubbing against that sore spot, fraying nerves already frayed from what had happened the day before.
She’d been so close to getting away…so very close.
But he’d caught her. He’d dragged her from the safety of the shadows and into the light, making her his prisoner, making her marry him, trapping her yet again in this hateful place.
And now he was getting angry with her because she’d wasted his time.
All of a sudden she hated him. Hated his silvery gaze and the way it made her feel. Hated the way he called her mouse. And most of all she hated how he assumed she was pathetic and cowardly—and she wasn’t.
‘And stop looking at me that way,’ she said angrily, shoving herself off the window seat, pleased when he took a couple of steps back to give her room. ‘You hateful…hateful b-bastard.’
He said nothing, merely tilted his head to look down at her, assessing.
And she stared back, all the blood in her veins hot with a fury that had been there all her life, waiting in the shadows like her.
But now it was out, bursting its banks like a flood tide, and for the first time since she could remember she felt powerful. She felt strong.
Perhaps if her brothers had been here she wouldn’t have cowered.
Maybe she would have punched them in the face.
‘No, not a mouse at all,’ he said slowly. ‘What would you prefer to be, then?’
‘Why not try my actual name?’
The look in his eyes shifted, became sharp-edged as an icicle. It moved over her slowly, as if he was taking her in, cataloguing her every feature, and it made her suddenly breathless.
Then he said, his dark, deep voice lingering on each syllable, ‘Guinevere.’
A shiver crept over her skin and she nearly trembled. He’d said her name like a poem, or a song, and so slowly—as if he was tasting it, taking his time over it.
She’d never heard anyone say it like that. Mostly because no one had said it at all. She was always and for ever either ‘girl’ or just ‘mouse’.
She stared up at him, her anger slowly ebbing away. It felt as if he’d given her an unexpected gift and now she didn’t know what to say.
The morning sun slid over his night-dark hair, shining full in his face, making his odd light eyes look crystalline, the planes and angles of his features highlighted with exquisite perfection.
She was standing very close to him, she realised then, as close as she had been yesterday, in the throne room, when he’d put his finger beneath her chin.
And she felt again what she’d felt back then.
The warmth of his body and his scent, an intoxicating mix of sun, salt and warm earth.
It made her imagine the wind in her hair, walking in a summer forest, maybe, or on a boat, riding the waves.
Freedom. He smelled like freedom.
Breathing felt difficult, and every thought went out of her head as the air around them became weighted with a tension she didn’t understand. Her cheeks burned and her heartbeat sounded far too loud. And in place of her anger was something else. Something hotter and more demanding.
He had gone very still, that intensity back in his eyes.
If she lifted her hand, she could touch him. She wouldn’t have to reach far, since there was barely any distance between them. What would he feel like if she did? If she laid her hand on his chest? Would he be as hard as she imagined? Would he feel as hot? What would he do if she did?
She felt dizzy at the thought, and breathless too, as if she’d run a long way and very fast.
What are you doing?
She had no idea. She had no idea why she even felt this way. And yet she felt consumed by it. By him.
An eon seemed to pass. All the air in the little library was vanishing, bit by bit, and she knew it had something to do with him—with his height and the broad width of his shoulders and that glitter in his eyes, which weren’t quite as icy as they had been.
No, if she wasn’t much mistaken, it looked as if there were silver flames burning there instead.
Then, quite abruptly, he turned away. ‘I have no time this morning to discuss our marriage,’ he said in curt tones. ‘It will have to be this evening. I will send for you.’
Then, before she could say another word, he stalked out.