Chapter 26 #3
That was when he stood. The chair scraped back, harsh in the silence. He moved around the table slowly, like he wasn’t angry, like he was simply correcting a mistake.
He stopped in front of me, shadow falling over my face.
“You always did have a mouth,” he said, voice low. “Even when I thought you were someone else.”
I didn’t flinch. I looked up at him, tired and starving and mean enough to keep living.
“Funny,” I whispered. “I was thinking the same thing about you.”
His hand moved fast.
The slap cracked across my face with brutal force.
My head snapped to the side, vision flashing white, pain blooming hot and immediate. The metallic taste of blood flooded my mouth, and for a second all I could hear was the ringing in my ears and the steady roar of my pulse.
I dragged in a breath that shook.
Ciaran’s voice was calm when he spoke again, as if he hadn’t just hit me. As if this was still a conversation he controlled.
“Try again,” he murmured. “Answer me like you want to live.”
Blood slid from the corner of my mouth, warm at first, then cooling the second it touched the air.
I’d bitten my tongue when he slapped me. I could taste copper pooling under my teeth every time I swallowed. My cheek throbbed. My jaw ached. My eyes watered from the sting, but I refused to look away. If I was going to bleed on his floor, he was going to watch it.
“Yes,” I said, voice rough with blood and hunger. “Something was real.”
Ciaran’s amber eyes didn’t soften. If anything, they narrowed, like the answer disappointed him for existing.
“The only thing that was real,” I continued, “was that I wanted revenge on Valen.”
His mouth tightened.
I smiled with the barest flash of teeth. “He killed my best friend. He killed Princess Aeliana. The woman you thought you married. The woman you were so eager to build your precious alliance around.”
The air went cold in a different way. Not dungeon cold. Not Icespire cold.
Ciaran cold.
“I saw you as a means to an end,” I said, calm and vicious all at once. “An army. A crown. A convenient weapon pointed at the monster who took her from me. If that bruises your ego, I suggest you take it up with the concept of diplomacy.”
His nostrils flared.
I licked the blood from my lip, slow, deliberate. “You wanted truth, didn’t you?”
Ciaran’s control snapped.
He turned away from me like he couldn’t stand the sight of my face, paced two steps, and then shouted, “And yet you left with him!”
The sound cracked through the sitting room, bouncing off stone. Even the guards seemed to stiffen.
I blinked once, slowly. “I didn’t leave with him.”
His head whipped back toward me.
“Your third wife stole me for him,” I said, sweet as venom. “Isolde… Oh, right,” I added, because I couldn’t help myself. “The quiet one. The observant one. The one you married and somehow didn’t notice was holding a knife behind her back the entire time.”
I shifted on the floor, knees screaming, chains clinking. “She dragged me through your castle. Up to the highest tower. And she handed me to Valen like I was a bounty she wanted paid for.”
Ciaran’s jaw flexed so hard I thought his teeth might crack.
“I had no intention of going to Valen,” I said flatly.
The words barely left my mouth before Ciaran moved.
One second he was standing there, all cold restraint and kingly patience, and the next he was on me. Fast. Furious. A storm in human skin. He crossed the space in three strides and grabbed my arms like he meant to tear the truth out through my wrists.
Pain shot up my shoulders. My chains snapped taut. I sucked in a breath that scraped raw.
“Was there a woman there?” he demanded, voice low and shaking with something that wasn’t just anger. “Golden hair. About your height. Light magic. Thin. Gentle looking.”
His grip tightened, hard enough that I knew bruises would bloom in the shape of his fingers.
“Her name would be Cassie,” he said, eyes burning into mine. “Did you see her?”
I blinked up at him, stunned, my mind struggling to catch up.
“What?” I rasped.
He shook me once, like he couldn’t stand the delay. “Answer me!”
I stared at him like he’d finally lost the last thread holding his sanity together. “No,” I said, voice rough with disbelief. “No, I didn’t meet anyone like that.”
His face twisted.
Not rage.
Something uglier. Something cracked.
“I know he has her,” Ciaran hissed, more to himself than to me. “I know it.”
I swallowed, my stomach turning. “Ciaran… you’re not making sense.”
He released one of my arms only to rake a hand through his hair, pacing half a step like the room was suddenly too small for the violence in him. Light flickered under his skin, a faint shimmer at his fingertips, like his magic was answering his loss of control.
“Queen Marisella debriefed me,” he snapped, eyes wild as they cut back to mine. “I know what Valen is. I know what he does. I know the sick obsession his dragon has with you.”
My throat tightened.
Ciaran stepped closer again, looming, his voice dropping into something dangerously calm.
“And your betrayal,” he said, each word precise as a blade, “has united us in one singular purpose.”
His amber eyes burned.
“To destroy him.”