Chapter 16
Chapter sixteen
Aldric
All the color drained from her face in the wake of his words. “How do you know about that?” she whispered, sitting back in her chair, distancing herself from him further.
He shrugged. “I hear things.”
His kirei visibly swallowed. A muscle in her jaw ticked. Still, her foot tapped against the floor, marking out the time. “Well, I would prefer if you forgot that you had heard ‘things.’ I don’t want anyone else to know.”
He frowned at her, fighting hard against the wave of irritation welling up inside him. “Who do you think I’m going to tell, Sera?” He hadn’t talked about it with anyone, not even Calix.
But at least she hadn’t bothered denying having the visions. That was a step in the right direction, he thought. They were actually…talking. Communicating.
He decided to press his luck further. “What do you see in the visions?”
She rose to her feet so abruptly that she nearly toppled her chair. “Why do you care?”
He didn’t know how to answer that question. Why did he care? What did it matter to him what sort of visions plagued her?
In his silence, she frowned and turned away. Almost as if to herself, she whispered, “That’s what I thought.” Before he could react, she was already making for the door, declaring as she went, “I think that was long enough.”
That time, he chose to be offended.
But he kept it to himself, smoldering quietly until the moment she hesitated and glanced back his way. Her frown deepened, uncertainty flickering in her pale gaze. “Do you think I should…muss my hair a little before I leave?”
All his mounting anger at his silly kirei popped in that moment, like a soap bubble.
How could such a mature and clever woman be so terribly ridiculous in the same breath?
With a sigh, he slid off his stool. “Come here.”
Surprisingly, she did. Without question. Without balking.
For once.
He waited for her to settle upon the stool before he stepped forward and sank his fingers into her carefully styled hair, hunting for all the many little pins holding it all together. Bewilderingly, she let him, not blinking, not flinching.
Why was he doing this? Playing along with her absurd need to weave these illusions for the sake of others? What did it matter if their farce of a marriage was consummated or not?
Her hair was just as soft as he had imagined it would be—like silk against his coarse skin.
Focus, he chided himself while mussing the chestnut locks beyond repair.
It didn’t matter that her hair was soft.
Nor that she smelled nice. Nor that she was just…
sitting there, letting him touch her without shying away or lashing out.
None of it mattered. It was all for show. For appearances.
Depositing a handful of hairpins on his desk, he stepped back behind her and pulled free the dagger from his wrist sheath. “Do you trust me?” he pointlessly asked, already knowing the answer.
Without a single moment’s hesitation, his kirei bit out an immediate, “No.”
He snorted. Of course she didn’t. But that wasn’t going to stop him now.
Carefully slipping his blade beneath the laces of her wedding gown, he jerked his hand upward—slicing the laces clean through from the small of her back all the way to the nape of her neck.
Sera’s gasp hitched in his ears, distracting him in a way he didn’t like. “Aldric!” she breathlessly scolded, her voice rising a full octave higher than normal. “What in the world are you doing?”
He sheathed the dagger again. “Giving your maids something to gossip about,” he muttered while inspecting the damage. It looked like he hadn’t ripped her chemise at all. Nor nicked her flawless skin.
Good.
She shot him a look over her shoulder, her expression a storm of emotions he had no hope of deciphering. “How is that helpful?” she hissed, her arms crossed over her chest again, holding her gown in place.
He met her look unflinchingly and calmly explained, “You want this to look real? This is how we make this look real. You didn’t exactly schedule much time for this interlude, kirei.”
Color flared across her cheeks as his words sank in. “Oh,” she breathed, turning back around to face forward again. And that was that.
He worked quickly, taking pieces of the sliced laces and tying the top of her gown back together so it didn’t slip right off her shoulders while she made her way back to her own quarters to change.
As the mental picture of her gown doing just that infected his mind, the dark, jealous beast inside him snarled back to life.
He double-knotted the laces to ensure that didn’t happen. “There. That should do the trick.” Finally stepping back, he nodded, satisfied with his work.
“And what about you?” she asked, her voice little more than a thread of sound.
He was just about to reassure her that he had no intention of interacting with anyone beyond his men for several hours yet and none of them cared about his personal affairs when she swiveled about upon the stool and slipped both of her hands into his hair.
Yet again, he froze, afraid of spoiling the moment if he so much as dared to breathe.
Her fingers were gentle as they combed through his hair, carefully mussing the strands.
Her fingernails scraped against his scalp with each pass.
He fought hard against letting his eye close.
Against luxuriating in the moment like a cat lounging in a bit of sun.
He swallowed, his throat growing thick.
No one had touched him like this—ever. Not since he was a boy.
“That’s enough, I think,” he rasped, gently catching her wrists in his grip.
Her eyes met his, and her lips curved into a small smile—a wonderfully mischievous smile. “I won’t cut up your clothing,” she whispered, as if they were two children sharing a secret, “because I’m not a barbarian.”
“That’s fair,” he breathed back.
He rather liked this Sera—impish rather than infuriating. Her smile turned a touch shy, a little unsure, as his one-eyed gaze lingered on hers.
Clearing his throat, he released her wrists and took a step back.
“Here, let me get you a cloak so you don’t have to wander the halls feeling naked.
” He busied himself with that task, letting it distract him from how…
normal all of this felt, ridiculous as it was.
The silence now growing between them was almost companionable, even.
He should have known it was too good to last.
By the time he had found his cloak and turned back to face his kirei, her face was contorted into some odd mixture of confusion and anger she leveled straight at him with a fresh glare—another barbed arrow she sought to lodge into his flesh.
Into his heart.
“I just don’t understand you, Aldric,” she seethed, rising to her feet and snatching the cloak from his hands.
He blinked at her, endeavoring not to react. To not let her bait him into another pointless fight. Slowly, he asked, “What’s there to not understand?”
Her mouth worked again as her hands fumbled with the cloak. After a time, she finally managed to fling it over her shoulders. On her, it was more like a capelet. But it would at least obscure the ruined back of her dress from view.
“Here you are, acting…almost playful with me, when…” Her voice trailed off. Her face fell.
Brow furrowing, he waited for her to finish.
But she didn’t. She just turned away from him and briskly marched toward the door. Under her breath, she uttered that word he hated above all others: “Never mind.”
A growl rumbled low in his chest as he chased after her. “I have done everything you asked today, Sera. Everything. Like a trained monkey.” The words were bile in his throat. Acid on his tongue. He had done everything for her, and still she wasn’t pleased.
Nothing he did was ever good enough for her.
She wrenched open the door, startling the Queensguard waiting for her on the other side.
But his hand closed around her wrist, pinning her in place. Refusing to let her go until she gave him some answers. “So tell me, Your Majesty, how have I refused to meet your expectations this time?”
She shot him a look full of hurt, though he hadn’t grabbed her with any force at all. “Let me go, Aldric.”
“Not until you tell me what I’ve done.”
Her discomfort was palpable. Her humiliation doubly so. No doubt his kirei was mortified that they had a captive audience for their latest row, just as they had for their last.
But perhaps she should have thought about that before opening the door.
Words burned in her eyes. Words he knew she so desperately wanted to fling in his face. And yet she didn’t. For some reason, she was still holding something back. Why?
The not knowing was driving him mad.
Blinking rapidly, Sera retreated by a full step, stepping out into the corridor. He let her go, his hand slipping free from her wrist and falling back to his side. Limp. Useless. He was growing tired of these games. This push and pull. This hot and cold.
They were both too old for such things.
Her gaze slipped away from his. Her stance shifted to something closed off. Defensive. Finally, she whispered, “I just…don’t understand about the ring. My wedding ring, I mean.”
The words rang false. She was lying.
But like a fool, he took the bait. “What about it?”
His pretty wife donned her pride again like armor. Her chin lifted. Her eyes locked with his. “I merely wondered if you meant to give offense by ordering me a ring in your family’s colors rather than my own? Or if it was a mere oversight on your part?”
The words landed like a blow to his jaw, knocking him off-kilter.
What a vapid creature. A self-absorbed, ungrateful, spiteful—
Aldric swallowed back all the things he truly wished to say to the woman before him. For better or worse, she was his wife. His ally. His one chance to reclaim his birthright, given the weight she carried with the Church.
But even all of that couldn’t keep him from growling, “Are you truly cross with me because your ring isn’t in the right color?” His attention fell toward her left hand, to the ring glittering there.
The ring he had spent far too much time toying with when he was a child.
Thinning his lips, he snapped his gaze back to his kirei’s own gray and coldly pointed out, “That was my mother’s ring.”
On any other day, he would have been more than happy to bask in the shock that wrote itself across her face in the wake of his words. But on that particular day? He was tired. Tired of too many questions with no answers. Tired of playing the part of a gentleman.
Tired of her.
Without another word, he turned his back on Seraphina de la Croix.
And slammed the door in her face.