Chapter 15
Chapter fifteen
Aldric
The moment he slammed the door to his bedchamber shut behind him, he started berating himself in every language he knew.
The common tongue. Ancient Drakmori. Kunishi.
What was he doing? What was he saying?
What did he mean that he would die for her merely because she was his wife? What about Drakmor? What about his throne? What about his planned vengeance against his brother and that viperous wench, Charlotte?
Was this what he had become? Reduced to a simpering, lovesick fool intent on quoting the Scriptures to her after a mere kiss?
One. Single. Kiss.
Was that truly all it had taken to see him broken to his kirei queen’s will?
He ripped the ridiculous coronet from his brow and flung it across the room, not satisfied until he heard the pointless accessory clatter against the stone floor. The satin eyepatch he had been made to wear for the sake of the wedding soon followed.
He wanted out of this costume and back into his clothes. His clothes. Simple fabrics. Sturdy brigandine. His leather eyepatch. But when he tried to unbutton his doublet, his fingers fumbled. His hands were shaking.
He couldn’t help but bark out a laugh at how weak he had become in his short time within Elmoria. He hadn’t trembled like this since his first kill on the battlefield.
He kicked the step stool sitting by the bed toward a dresser housing a small basin of water instead and limped after it, irritated all over again that nothing was the right size for him here. Blackrun had been cold and wet, it was true, but at least it had been filled with things made for him.
It had been home.
The water from the basin was blessedly cool against his flushed skin as he splashed his face and ran moist fingers against the back of his neck and through his hair. But it wasn’t enough to quiet the storm raging in his chest. Feverish. He felt feverish. But he knew better. This was no fever.
It was just Sera again.
He hadn’t realized she had affected him so badly in the moment, but now that he was finally alone and could relax—no longer on guard for threats—thoughts of her flooded his mind.
The way she had demanded his kiss back in the cathedral.
The way she had threaded her fingers through his hair.
The way she had clung to him like a woman on the verge of drowning.
Clever Sera. Beautiful Sera. Infuriating Sera.
She burned you, he reminded himself, disgusted with his own ridiculousness. Oh no, he wouldn’t be forgetting that any time soon. She had burned him like a holy man wanting to read his soul.
If only Beck were still alive and here to see him now, his old friend would get a good laugh out of his current state. Aldric Hargrave, driven mad by a woman. A strange woman. A potentially dangerous woman.
A bitter taste filled his mouth at the thought. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had felt this way. Never? Or maybe once before, in his early twenties.
There had been that one girl…oh, what had been her name? Leni? Lina?
Beck would have known. But then again, Beck had always been the skirt chaser out of the two of them. Ever since they were boys—
A sudden knock at the door lured a snarl to his throat. It was probably Calix, coming to check on him. Or maybe Kyn wanting to make sure he hadn’t busted the stitches in his left thigh after all the exertion.
Either way, he wasn’t in the mood.
“What do you want?” he shouted, splashing another handful of water onto his face.
The door clicked open. Quiet steps padded into the room, accompanied by the swish of fabric. He froze, his chest clenching, his pulse racing.
He didn’t have to look to know who it was.
A Kunishi swear escaped from him before he could bite it back.
Something rude, not fit for a lady’s ears.
“Sera,” he growled in the common tongue, scrambling for a towel.
He used it to mask the right side of his face and the tangle of scar tissue that existed where his eye once had while he hunted for his leather eyepatch.
He heard her exchange some quiet words with her guards before shutting the door behind her. Back to her prim and proper self, his kirei coolly declared, “I would prefer you call me ‘Your Majesty,’ you know.”
He grimaced and ripped open the top drawer of the dresser. “Too many syllables.”
Colder still, she suggested, “Seraphina, then.”
He snorted. “That’s the same amount of syllables.”
There it was. His blasted eyepatch.
Yanking it free, he chanced a glance over his left shoulder, meeting his wife’s gaze for a split second. Something tight pinched at the corners of her eyes. Her cheeks were flushed. She looked displeased.
But she so often did where he was concerned.
“What have I done wrong this time?” he sighed, exchanging the towel for the eyepatch. Ironically, now that he was back in her presence, his fingers stopped shaking; it didn’t take long for him to tie the patch into place.
Silence was his only answer.
It wasn’t until he turned around to face her properly that she crossed her arms over her chest and deigned to murmur, “You left without me, even though I told you we still had to retire before we could go our separate ways.”
Understanding dawned as his gaze ticked between his kirei in all her obvious discomfort and the closed door. Slowly, he looked back to her and raised both his eyebrows.
Beneath the weight of his stare, she looked away first.
His mouth ran dry. “All for the sake of appearances, no doubt,” he hedged, trying to make sense of the situation rather than jumping to conclusions.
She soon confirmed his suspicions. “Of course.” Shifting her weight from foot to foot, she lifted her chin and added with a healthy dose of all her usual, obnoxious self-confidence, “I thought I would just linger for five to ten minutes before returning to the reception. That should be long enough, surely.”
Five to ten minutes.
He didn’t know whether to be amused or offended.
Dryly, he quipped, “Shall I jump on the bed while you wait, to add to the illusion?”
Her attention snapped back his way at once, her gaze sharp, her nostrils flaring. “Do not be crude with me, Aldric Hargrave. I do not appreciate it.”
He supposed he deserved that. It had been a long while since he’d last spent any time at all with a lady. And now he had nearly spent an entire day with one.
A lady he was married to, no less.
Sighing through his nose, he eased himself off the stool and made his way across the room to the desk. Pulling out the chair, he gestured to it. “You might as well sit down.”
She did so slowly, as if she expected him to kick the chair out from under her before her rear could ever hit the seat. When finally she settled, her brow furrowed.
There was no other chair within the room that he could claim. His kirei had surely given him the smallest quarters she could when he arrived in Goldreach, a room just big enough to hold a bed, a desk, and a dresser.
Not that he needed much space.
He contented himself with dragging the stool closer and plopped himself upon it, his arms resting on his legs, his fingers threading together. His left thigh ached something fierce. Maybe he had popped a stitch.
He’d have to get Kyn to look at it later.
Delicately clearing her throat, his pretty wife broke the silence first. “I suppose I should see you moved to a nicer room. It will be expected, now that we are married.”
He grunted. He’d be leaving for Arlund the moment the reinforcements from Coreto and Wellane arrived. What did it matter?
Silence descended between them again. He watched the rhythmic tap-tap-tap of her slippered foot against the floor. Was she counting the seconds?
Out of nowhere, she broke the silence between them again to ask, “Should I call for something to drink?” She sounded stiff, like she was reading from an etiquette primer.
A humorless smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “You would be a little too preoccupied to call for something to drink,” he dully reminded her.
“Oh. Right.”
Chewing on the inside of his cheek, he considered asking her about what had happened at the cathedral.
There was the business with her burning him.
And she had mentioned a voice. But he didn’t know how to bring it up without potentially offending her—something he seemed rather good at doing.
He didn’t have a silver tongue like her peacock, Crestley. Blunt was the way he always did things.
Drawing in a deep breath, he settled on being blunt yet again.
“You burned me at the cathedral,” he quietly informed her without preamble. “When we kissed. It felt like the time your Shepherd Truth-Read me in the throne room.”
He carefully studied her reaction, drinking in her confusion. Her indignation. Her denial.
She looked at him as if he had gone mad. “What? You must be mistaken. That is…“ She frowned. “Impossible.”
Sera was a terrible liar. He knew that much about her. This time, she wasn’t lying.
His eyebrows knitted together. Rather than getting answers, he was merely collecting more questions. He might as well gather a few more.
Throwing caution to the wind, he leaned forward and played his hand for his kirei to see.
The truth. Letting her know that he knew all about her great secret.
“And what about these visions you’ve been having?
” he asked, causing his wife to choke on thin air with her next breath.
“Now that we’re married, it’s probably time you started telling me about them. ”