40
“Nauriel.”
I jolted awake and sat up so fast that I nearly bumped my forehead into Amlach’s, who was perched on the bed’s edge. I looked at him, confused and inexplicably out of breath.
“How long have you been back?” I asked him, frustrated that my ear had not picked up any sound.
“A while,” he answered in a husky voice.
Frowning, he reached to touch my cheek—clean thanks to the balm that a servant had massaged on my face to melt the pigments when I returned to the room at the end of the celebrations—but I swatted his fingers away as if they were a red-hot iron.
Amlach inhaled sharply and placed his hand beside my thigh, his arm stretched diagonally between us like a prison bar. His gaze remained fixed on my cheek.
Suspicious, I touched it. It was wet. Shocked, I whipped my head around. There was a darker patch on the corner of my pillow.
I had cried in my sleep without even realizing it.
For him, a human serving a king who, as far as I knew, might have already reassembled his army and initiated a new attack on my kingdom.
And here I was, crying over something impossible and . . . forbidden.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Angry at my own weakness, I was about to command Amlach to stay away from me when I noticed four tripods positioned in the corner by the bed and mirrored furniture. On these tripods rested lavish trays filled with salty treats, desserts, fruits, juices, and milk.
Wrath passed through me like a thunderbolt, and I glowered at Amlach. “What is this?”
He exhaled forcefully through his nose, glancing at the trays through the tousled strands of hair framing his face. “I thought I’d start asking something simple,” he said hesitantly. “And our breakfast is always so poor, so—”
“You’re crazy if you think I’m going to touch that food,” I snarled. The very idea that it was bought with Mistress Yrrek’s money made me feel as sick as Amlach’s smell.
The same smell that, for centuries, I had sensed on Araton and Serie, as well as on my parents. The same smell that had always saddened me.
That now made me boil with rancor.
Amlach sighed, rubbing his weary face before moving his hand on my thigh and giving it a soft squeeze. “Nauriel—”
“Did you like it?” I cut him off aggressively.
He jerked his gaze away from me; his eyes still bore the black pigment, now smudged nearly to his cheekbones. “It was just a fuck.”
I clawed his wrist, tightening my grip to regain his attention. “You didn’t answer my question.”
His fingers pressed into my skin so hard that I gasped abruptly from the sudden pain.
“Do you really want me to?” he hissed, his eyes burning with an intensity that made me feel as if he wanted to reduce me to ashes.
I stared at him as if he had just stabbed me, unable to fathom that he had truly enjoyed spending the night with a woman who had paid for his body. A woman he had agreed to spy on so that we could return to our land as soon as possible.
A woman who, if she found out, would ensure he faced the same fate as Roxior’s lover—if not worse.
No, he couldn’t have liked being with her.
He couldn’t have.
Nevertheless, I suddenly saw something under the collar of his tunic. The irregular outline of a violet halo. A mark that I had seen countless times on Araton and Serie’s necks in the first decades after their union.
Horrified, I impulsively leaned toward him to loosen the knot of his belt. I could hear him take a furious breath as I forcefully opened the hems of his tunic.
I turned to stone.
Alongside the bruise on his throat, Amlach had scratches extending down his chest to his nipples.
Signs that the Mistress had left on him as she rode him, welcoming him inside herself despite the absence of love between them.
Although he wasn’t hers.
And Amlach had pushed into her, over and over again. He’d kissed her. He’d enjoyed her curves. He had breathed her, tasted her, even though he didn’t even know her.
Even though he wanted me.
Feeling the onset of fresh tears, I began to rise as, in a voice heavy with anguish, I hissed, “You humans are disgusting.”
Amlach angrily seized my arm and yanked me closer. “It doesn’t seem like sharing the bed with one of them has been too gross for you so far, Elf.”
“Let go of me,” I growled.
“But don’t worry,” he went on with cruel vehemence. “From now on, you’ll spend many nights alone.”
Unable to tolerate him any longer, I violently broke free from his grasp and fled from the room.