15. Cornered and wounded animals #2
The sprite rose from my dressing table and offered a hand to help me up. “Two, actually. Ask him about what book he’s enjoying right now and get your bottom moving out that door right this minute. He despises tardiness.”
I hadn’t been particularly worried about my dinner with Maksym until I was standing in front of the closed dining room doors, the sound of Eilir’s wings buzzing down the hall away from me. The moment my confidante left, I found my palms damp and blood rushing faster than usual.
Did it help that Maksym had given no context as to the tone of this dinner? No.
Or that we’d just magically bound ourselves together, marking our skin forever, despite only knowing each other for a couple of days? Definitely not.
Or how about the fact that he sealed our bargain with a kiss I’m sure was unnecessary, but I also didn’t hate it in my moment of shock?
And followed it up with another distraction of a kiss I’d definitely thought about more than once?
Plus, I was certain he’d kissed my forehead when he tucked me in after the initium, and that felt more intimate than his lips on mine?
Those really didn’t fucking help.
Why they all rushed to the forefront of my mind the moment I stood alone in front of those doors, I didn’t know, but I needed a second to compose myself.
I closed my eyes and shook out my arms, taking a slow breath in through my nose.
I let it out just as slowly from my parted lips until my lungs ached with emptiness.
“Miss Wynn?”
All that air was sucked back into my chest, and my eyes shot open.
The doors were open, and the King of Grimmoria was watching me with a lopsided smile.
Heat crawled up my chest at an alarming rate.
He was dressed a little finer than when I last saw him, having forgone the tunic and vest he seemed to favor for a thigh-length black jacket tailored immaculately and accented with bits of muted gold thread.
It might’ve been the first time I’d seen him look like a true semblance of a king, and I was definitely staring.
“Everything alright?” he mused.
My eyes flickered up from their natural level at his shoulders to find him watching me with a dark, raised brow, his lips quirked.
My cheeks were about to combust. “Everything’s great,” I fumbled.
Maksym looked doubtful, albeit still amused, but he stepped aside and motioned me into the dining room.
It gave me a precious moment to gather myself again as he shut the doors and trailed behind me to the table.
I shouldn’t have been surprised I’d make a fool of myself before we’d even sat down to eat, but there we were.
At least Maksym was going to know exactly what he was getting into with this bargain.
Admittedly, I knew little of Grimmoria’s customs, but taking my seat before their king seemed like it might be frowned upon. So, I waited to the right of the head of the table while Maksym ambled over to a sideboard piled with bottles and glasses.
Hopefully, another glass of the lacquer-stripping spirits wasn’t on the menu.
The table was set much as it had been at our last meal—a spread of simple decorations scattered down its gratuitous length, two modest place settings tucked at the end.
They had about half the amount of silverware I was used to being forced to navigate when sitting at a table this size, and that was a relief.
All signs pointed to casual, and that eased a measure of tension from my spine.
When the muted clinking of glassware stopped, and the barely audible sound of Maksym’s footfalls picked up, I glanced over to find him armed with two amply poured glasses of what I hoped was red wine.
Despite his heavy-handed pours, the liquid barely sloshed in its confines as he strode back to the table.
“It comes from the wilds, but I’d never tell Malakai how much of it I go through,” Maksym chuckled as he extended a glass to me. As soon as my fingers brushed it, he stilled and drew it back. “Ah, wait a moment.”
He took a healthy sip from both glasses before placing one back in my still-outstretched hand with a smile. “Newfound trust and all that.”
I glanced at the burgundy liquid before returning a reserved smile of my own. “Appreciated. But doesn’t this dictate you wouldn’t be able to do anything to me anyway?”
I flashed him my bargain-marked palm as I spoke, but the king gave me a noncommittal shrug as he unbuttoned his jacket and lowered into his chair.
He took a slow sip of his drink before adding, “Everything in life has a loophole if you look hard enough, Miss Wynn, including bargains. I’m sure you know that. ”
As I sat down, I frowned. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
The king had to know well that I, an Odessan, had sparse knowledge of bargains, but the way he phrased it sent tension flooding back into my muscles.
“Nothing as dramatic as I’m sure you think it is,” he chuckled. “I bargain sparingly and in good faith. I promise you that.”
Now that was a promise I was skeptical of.
He’d laid out our bargain to me, a complete stranger, with far too much ease for me to believe it was something he did with any restraint.
And the more I caught glances of the marks decorating his skin, similar to so many decorating the flesh of the Elixia and other Grimmorians I’d been around, the firmer I found myself in that belief.
I’d thought them all just tattoos at first, the dark glyphs and sigils I could glimpse on his arms, chest, and hands, but I realized now they all looked identical in structure to the matching marks we bore on our palms. Painted in swathes of blood, not meticulously poked into his skin by thousands of needlepoint pinpricks.
Something told me that was another topic Eilir would tell me was off-limits.
“You look much better rested.”
My attention flickered up from the swirling marks on the back of Maksym’s hand to find his vivid amber eyes studying me with a little too much curiosity.
It took a moment for me to realize what he had just said.
But of course.
The truest male-speak for how I clearly looked like absolute shite the last time I saw him, but he wanted to frame it up with a poor attempt at a compliment instead.
“Oh, thank you.” I huffed a dry laugh. “I’m sure I looked like utter shit when I came out of that cave. But sleep has been coming easily now that I’m not mulling over being executed.”
The corner of his mouth tugged up, and from over the rim of his glass, he said, “Well, I’m relieved to know you think our arrangement is truly a better alternative to death.”
“As of this exact moment, it is. But it’s still early days, my liege.
” I sank back a little in my chair and did not miss how he tensed at the use of his title, which others tossed around so freely.
“Plenty of time for things to go to hell and back once or twice. How long until we wed again? A few months?”
My words came from a place of jest, but the king’s eyes narrowed, and something about his posture shifted entirely, like a band of tension had pulled the full way up his spine.
“That depends entirely on the Agōn Ferr,” he articulated.
“The events themselves are usually spread out over a few weeks. So, yes, it’ll likely be at least a couple of months.
But I don’t see why that would be of any concern unless you were hoping for things to go to hell and back during that time? Planning for it, maybe?”
It was my turn to sit up as straight as a fencepost. “Why would I plan for that?” My voice came as an incredulous squeak.
He was quick to counter, “Why would you bring it up at all?”
Goddess take me, this man had some fucking trust issues if he couldn’t handle a simple joke. And whether he knew it, he’d just sparked an ember of anger that would not be easily snuffed.
“Because we are two strangers, Maksym,” I bit back, “and you forced me into this bargain all in the name of, what, clearing your conscience of some old debt? How is it not going to go to hell? It’s only a matter of time.”
“I forced you into nothing, Miss Wynn.” He set down his glass and shook his head with the most aggravating scoff. “I’m not sure what narrative you’re trying to paint for yourself, but it would be wise to remember you were the one carrying forgeries of my seal and trespassing in our territory.”
I was completely and utterly floored.
Was this not the same man who had kissed me after the feast, ruse or not, and had talked about our betrothal like it was a point of pride? The same one who wanted me to cheat at my initiation just so I could see it through, who carried me to my bed after it?
“Oh, how could I forget? The crime I committed, of which I have no memory and nearly died during, which my friends and countrymen did, while we were en route to fulfill a sham contract with your kingdom.” I gulped down a large mouthful of wine. “How. Could I. Forget?”
Maksym sighed. “Do you not have laws in Odessa? Ones that must be upheld, that even a king could not overrule because it is his job to be accountable to his subjects?”
A barb sat on the tip of my tongue, one that would have cut Maksym down for how little accountability mattered when his subjects treated him with such little respect, like he was a boy king making foolish decisions.
But my teeth ached from how tightly I clenched my jaw, because we did have that once upon a time in Odessa.
Our laws doubled when my brother took our father’s crown, but if only the same could be said about his accountability.
For as quick as he was to enact brutal stringency on a whim, he was just as fast to sweep away every egregious act of those who held an ounce of favor with him.
But I couldn’t bring myself to say a word of that to Maksym, not with how focused I was on stopping myself from leaving.
And to think, how foolish I had been, standing outside the dining room doors, locked with my nerves.