Chapter 49
Forty-Nine
A good brownie always says sorry.
But what do you do when ‘sorry’ isn’t enough? - Arienna
At the opening of my door, I shoot out of bed, my heart in my throat. Hope and fear mixes together. He’s come for me. Everyone else knocks.
Stumbling over my feet, I skid into the sitting room. My eyes latch on to his face. My blood runs cold. And despite murder being what got me into this mess in the first place, I want to try again.
Because someone has hurt him.
Someone has bruised his cheeks and cut open his lips.
Someone is going to die.
“Who did this to you?” I ask, my chest heaving, my fists clenching.
Given I’m already going to Niflhel for hurting the man I love, I might as well throw in a few more murders. Can’t exactly go to hel twice. “Was it someone from the Court?” I demand.
He smiles. “No.”
“Who then?”
He walks over to me, picks me up, and carries me back into the bedroom. My legs wrap tight around his waist. My hands cup his face as I stare into his eyes.
Pained.
Guarded.
Broken.
I did this to him.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I never meant to actually go through with it.”
He doesn’t say anything, just lays me down on the queen-sized bed, on top of the covers.
As he steps back to strip off his clothes, I watch him in bewilderment.
I don’t know where we stand, but that simple apology couldn’t’ve been everything he needed to hear, all I needed to say to make it right between us.
My eyes roam over his heavily bruised face.
My heart squeezing, I understand.
“You suffered a concussion,” I say.
My king laughs hollowly as he pulls down his trousers. “Probably.”
I scoot off the bed to get the healing wand out of the bathroom, but he steps in front of me, stretching one arm across the door. “Get back in bed.”
My mouth opens and closes as my brows furrow. “But I tried to kill you.”
“And it’s made me fucking tired. Turns out, immune or not, my body doesn’t like being poisoned.”
“So why are you here?”
He lifts me in his arms. “Because you’re here,” he says as if that explains everything.
But it doesn’t.
Why isn’t he upset?
Why isn’t he full of the nerves hounding every piece of my body?
“But I tried to kill you,” I say again.
He lowers me down on the bed. “And as Jace pointed out, I tried to kill you first.”
My breath catches. Trembling, I look him in the eye. “Jace also said you had them call off my execution.”
“I did.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” That would have changed everything, stopped everything…
I shake my head. I can’t blame him for my actions. I was too scared to talk to him about it too, thinking I’d need all the advantages I could get in order to succeed.
“Because I didn’t know you knew it was ever in play. Now go to bed.” Irritation lines his voice as he shoves me under the covers and crawls in beside me.
Sitting up, I push the blanket off us. “Why aren’t you angry?”
“I’m trying not to be,” he replies through clenched teeth.
“But why? You have every right to be. I. Just. Tried. To. Kill. You.” I shove his shoulder, wanting him to be angry with me, wanting something other than this cold, distant dismissiveness that I don’t know how to cross. Don’t know how to fix.
Tears burning my eyes, I shove him again.
“For fuck’s sake, woman, just go to sleep.”
“No. Not until you tell me why you’re not angry.”
“I’m not.”
“But you want to be.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Fine!” He jerks up out of bed, throwing the covers onto the floor. “You want me angry? You want me to tell you I was so fucking pissed with you, Jace had to talk me out of charging you and Fabia with treason?”
Tears fall down my cheeks, but I refuse to flinch away from him. I deserve it. All this pain and anger. I hurt him. “Yes,” I say.
Clenching his jaw, he shakes his head, reigns in his control, and shuts me out once more. “Just go to sleep.”
“No.” I shove him when he tries to lay back down.
Grabbing my hand, he yanks me onto my back and then rolls on top of me. “Don’t make me do this.”
“Do what?” I growl. “You’re not doing anything!” I shake my head. “I tried to kill you.” My voice breaks. My body trembles with the pain of my own actions. I can’t stand him pretending like nothing happened, like everything is fine between us.
It isn’t.
It’s broken.
And damaged.
And unfixable.
But he is here.
And I do not know what that means. I don’t know how to begin to fix this.
I need him to tell me. Because I have done everything I was taught to in Brownston, and I know it isn’t enough.
It doesn’t feel like enough. The gap between us can’t be fixed with a simple, “I’m sorry,” and I want to fix it.
I want to fix it so damn badly, but I don’t know how.
“Why are you here then?” I whisper, pleading with him to give me something I can do.
“I told you.” His jaw tightens again. Fury flares in his violet eyes. And pain, so much pain.
“Because I’m here? The woman who tried to kill you? That doesn’t make fucking sense!”
His lips crash down on mine, robbing me of my next words. His tongue steals into my mouth, rough and angry and moving with all the trapped emotions he will not say.
Perhaps what he cannot say.
Lifting my head off the mattress, I strain against his lips. My hands roam over his body, holding him to me, holding me to him, closing the gap between us in the only way I know how.
A shallow way when I want depth.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper against his lips, tears falling down my cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”
“Shut up,” he growls. “Stop fucking saying that.”
I flinch beneath his words, his harsh tone. My heart in my throat, my pulse in my ears, I fear that this is goodbye sex. So I tear my lips away from his, reach up, and slap his face. Hard.
He stills. A darkness pours off him, enveloping me and making me tremble. But I refuse to cower. I refuse to let him push me away when he clearly wants to be here.
I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to say sorry in a way that means something. But I’ll try anything – everything to show him I truly mean it.
“Then punish me,” I say, my voice wavering, my eyes challenging in their desperation.
“What?”
“Push me to my limit.” I pray he understands what I’m asking because I have no idea how I’m supposed to go about this.
“Arienna.” My king says my name like a curse. Like a warning. Like he knows what I want but he’ll refuse.
But I don’t care. He can’t hurt me more than I’m already hurting.
“Do it.” I slap him again. “Punish me.”
Growling, he rolls off the bed. Running a hand through his hair, he turns away.
I sit up, staring at him. Everything I am – every future and hope and dream, it’s all trapped in my throat.
“My king,” I breathe.
He spins around, his eyes hot, his face twisting with too many emotions to name. “If we do this, you have to promise me you won’t lie. If I ask you how you are, you’ll fucking tell me the truth. None of that brownie shit.”
I shake my head. Then nod. Realising I’m messing it up by confusing him already, I say, “I promise. None of that brownie stuff. Complete honesty.”
He sucks in a breath.
We stare at each other, letting the silence speak for us.
His body tight, he steps forward. “Green means you’re good to continue. Yellow means you’re okay but you’re getting uncomfortable. Red means I tone it back down, and ‘peace treaty’ means I fucking stop. Do you understand?”
I nod, needing him, needing this – whatever this entails. “Yes.”
“Arienna,” he warns.
“I promise.”
“Then get out of bed and on your knees.”
I’m on the floor in an instant, kneeling in front of him, staring up into his eyes.
“Hand me my belts.” I lean down, my hand groping the floor blindly as I search for his discarded clothes. I don’t want to move my eyes from his.
“Now,” he snaps.
Glancing away from him, I look down. Snatching up the two belts, I hand them to him.
He grabs them, along with my hands. Looping one belt through itself, he tightens it around one of my wrists and then the other. Locking it tight, he drags me across the room. My knees scrape against the hard wood floor.
Hauling me up underneath a beam in the ceiling, he tears off my slip and twists it into a rope. He ties one end around the belt binding me. Spinning me around, putting my back to him, he ties the other end over the beam. I’m lifted up onto my toes, my arms stretched tight above my head.
I can feel the tension in his body as he steps in close behind me.
“Do you know what you’re being punished for?” my king demands.
I try to turn my head to look at him, but a hard grip on my chin forces me to stare at the wall ahead.
“For trying to kill you?” My body shakes in anticipation.
The second belt slaps my ass. I jump, a yelp leaving my lips as my skin stings.
“Colour,” he demands.
I want to blurt out green, but I force myself to stop and think. To give him the truth. “Green,” I breathe.
His hand slaps me this time, not as hard. “Do you know what you’re being punished for?” he asks again.
I struggle to think, not understanding why my answer wasn’t correct. Isn’t that the issue between us? The massive flippin’ gap between us?
“N-no,” I stutter, hating that I don’t know him enough, don’t know us enough to know the reason why.
It’s only been a few days, I reason.
That should have been enough.
He’s my lifemate.
The literal other half of my soul.
“You’re being punished,” he says, grabbing my ass and rubbing the sting out of my skin, “for breaking my trust.”
My heart in my eyes, I turn my head to look at him. The belt slams down on my ass. I cry out, pain shooting up my back and down my leg.
“Colour?” he demands
“Green.”
“Don’t fucking lie to me.” His hand cups me again, his fingers kneading away the bite of the belt.
“Green.”
The physical pain I can take. But the emotional pain, the knowledge that he is hurting this badly because of me? That I cannot deal with.
“Don’t fucking do this for me,” he growls. “I need to be able to trust you.” His hand slaps my ass. I push into his palm.