Chapter 18 Zarek
Zarek
DON’T EXPECT PRIVACY
Ifeel like death warmed over.
My body screams in protest after riding for six days, and that damn cut on my inner thigh still hasn’t properly healed.
I did stop at the royal baths before coming here, so at least I no longer smell like the back end of a horse, but I also stared at my reflection long enough to know I’ve looked better.
And she deserves better. That thought’s been chewing at my insides since I rose with the thin red dawn this morning and realized I’d have to face my wife before that sun goes down.
We still haven’t even had a conversation.
She spent our wedding night puking and sobbing, out of her mind on drugs, while I got plastered and passed out in the feast hall. And then I left. For a week.
Shit, this marriage is off to a terrible start.
But what did I expect? King Malrik wasn’t trying to do me any favors when he picked the princess of Marion as my wife. He wanted a claim on their new gold mine, and I was the easiest means to that end. He doesn’t give a flying fuck if the two of us hate each other.
So why does it matter to me?
I hesitate just outside the door to my new quarters.
She might not be in here, of course. Hells, I almost hope she’s at the stables.
Telling Alia to give her all of my privileges was a rather pathetic attempt at an apology for the disaster of our wedding night, but gods, what else is she supposed to do around here? Petrys said she likes horses—
I reach for the door handle.
And then I freeze.
Some whisper of intuition raises the hair on my neck. I rock backward. I’ve learned to listen to that little whisper; it’s saved my life.
I hold my breath and close my eyes. It’s there, so soft I almost missed it.
Another voice, from the other side of the door. A man’s voice.
I grind my teeth and step away from the door. My hand traces the edge of the hallway wainscotting. The trigger for the secret passageway is all but invisible. I run my fingers down the catch, then press.
The door slides open, revealing a tight, dusty passage. I step inside, and the door swings shut behind me, leaving me in near-total darkness. A single light flickers in the gloom; the sun, streaming through the mirror that hangs on the wall opposite my bed.
I creep through the passageway, wondering who was the last person to use this little spyhole. Probably Hussen, making sure our marriage was consummated. I wonder what he thought of my wife puking over the side of the bed after I pretended to fuck her, then decide I really don’t want to know.
My gut pulls tight as I approach the mirror. I hear their voices now, Lilias and someone else, talking high and fast like they’re both excited. Some stupid flicker of hope whispers that maybe it’s her brother.
But I know better. Even before I reach the mirror, I know who it has to be. Petrys said she’s fucking her tutor, didn’t he?
The voices fall silent. I force myself to swallow the sting in the back of my throat and turn to face my room.
My heart sinks. My wife has her arms around a tall blond man, and she’s kissing him in a way that makes me feel like someone just slipped a knife through my rib cage. I step back. My shoulder blades hit the wall, and my vision swims.
Godsdamn it. I told her not to expect privacy in that room.
I fucking told her.
The man pulls away, growling something under his breath. My wife giggles. It’s a sound I’ve never heard her make, and it feels like claws dragging across my skin. She moves toward the bed and pulls the curtains back.
He turns toward the mirror for the first time.
Something about his face seems dimly familiar, and I have the horrible feeling that I should know who this is.
Then he turns away from the mirror, away from the bed and the beautiful woman on it, and toward my desk and the pile of parchment someone stacked on it.
What the fuck?
“Do you have to do that now?” my wife asks.
She’s pouting at him with a sort of flirty insolence I wouldn’t have thought she could muster. Horribly, my cock stirs in the darkness behind the mirror.
The man smiles at Lilias as he runs his hands over the stack of parchment on the desk, like he’s absentmindedly shuffling through them. He starts shoving them into a bag on the chair.
“You know me,” he says. “I hate a mess.”
When he turns his back to the bed, blocking what he’s doing from Lilias, his eyes are hard and sharp.
And I know it’s an act.
The flirting, the joke about hating a mess, it’s all deliberate.
Whoever this man is, whatever he’s pretending to be doing, he’s looking for something.
On my desk. He shoves the last stack of parchment into his bag, and then, moving quickly, he holds something dark against the candle flame.
It only takes a moment, and then he presses whatever it was against the desk.
He twists his wrist, lifts something small and pale, and tucks it into his vest.
Then he turns back toward the bed. Lilias smiles in a way that makes me feel like I’ve just been punched in the gut. A moment later, he tosses his belt to the side. And then I see his bare white ass cheeks as he shoves his pants to the floor.
Shit. I can’t watch this anymore.
I creep out of the secret passage, pull the dagger from my hip holster, and open the door to my fucking bedroom.