19 #4
“I did not marry,” he says, unapologetic. “My fiancé has been very ill. Too ill for the wedding ritual. But it seems she has made a full recovery overnight—just in time for the summer solstice.”
A bitter sound chokes me.
It’s me.
He is still engaged to me.
As I am to him.
Father and Oliver aren’t in the office deliberating where to put me for the rest of my life. They are going over the logistics of the marriage—because the quicker they can pass me over to Dray, the sooner it’s done.
Mother and Amelia aren’t just celebrating my return. They are gushing over the wedding they have just months to put into motion—because I’ve been brought home right in time for wedding season.
The smile I lift to Dray is sad.
Defeated.
Because he won.
And I’m the loser who slides down the windowsill and drops to the floor.
I bring my knees up and run my hands over them, back and forth, as if to soothe the trickles of anxiety nipping their way through my body.
“I expected more theatrics.”
I loll my head back against the window.
I say nothing, because I have nothing to say. Only horror spreading inside of me. Gutting me.
He turns his cheek to me and looks out onto the gardens. “I will be a fair husband. I will be generous and loyal—and in return, I expect your compliance.”
Obedience, he means.
My total and utter submission.
A dark tumbling storm is rising in me.
I breathe through it.
The mockery drips from my tone, “A love story for the ages.”
“Love,” he echoes, soft. “You asked me once if I loved you—of course you did not know it was yourself you were asking about.”
At the Debutante Ball, when I asked if he loved his new, mysterious fiancé.
I still remember what he said then.
‘At times.’
“But marriages are not for love, Olivia.” He says it so flippantly that it’s as though he’s talking about the weather. “Marriages are for politics.”
That is just not true.
Mother and Father love one another.
It’s something I always knew never to dream for myself, never to reach for. Sometimes we just know what is not meant for us.
But that is such a sad thing.
To live without love.
Tears thicken my voice, “Isn’t there space for it?”
Dray studies me, long and hard, and his eyes flicker like steel blades caught in the moonlight. “Mistresses.”
His answer is so empty that I suspect he hardly believes his own words. In fact, there is no place for mistresses among the aristos.
So he answers with a lie.
Because Dray is incapable of love.
I shake my head, stubborn. “Aristos men don’t take mistresses, so your answer is bullshit.”
It’s the way. Tradition. How can a man be taken seriously in business, be trusted, when he can’t even stay loyal to his wife?
But Dray’s grin churns my stomach.
It is light and lazy, and he shakes his head slightly. “As na?ve as ever.” He scoffs, and it’s pure mockery. “Do you really believe that all aristos men are entirely faithful?”
“My father would never—”
“No, he would not.” Dray agrees, that smile lingering as he takes a step towards me, and that closes half the distance between us.
My neck cranes and I look up at him.
The tears in my eyes blur him, but I don’t sob or double over, or give into these expectations of theatrics and tantrums—like they all think of me.
A dullness has taken over me.
Dray takes another step closer.
His Oxfords glint in the firelight.
He says, “Fidelity is a pretty ribbon we wrap around arranged marriages—so witches like you can stomach it easier.”
Slowly, he lowers to a crouch in front of me.
The mocking glint in his eyes is matched by the small curve of his mouth. “Are you asking for my fidelity, Olivia?”
“You say you don’t love me,” I start with a snivel, “but then why did you say you once did.”
He did. Thought I was passed out and didn’t hear him, wouldn’t remember.
But I remember, I just bury it all.
Dray’s upper lip twitches.
A darkness settles over him.
The shadows stretch over his smooth complexion, and all I can think is how menacing he looks.
“The delusions of a child,” he dismisses it so easily. “And your delusion lies in your expectations.”
I wipe at my wet cheek, at the silent tears he pays no attention to. “If you don’t love me, why are you so obsessed with having me?”
He reaches out for me, fingertips brushing along the shinbone of my leg.
“You are the right choice,” he says—and he says it so factually, so unemotionally, that it twists a knife in my chest. “You are the Craven daughter. You are a deadblood—and, as it turns out,” he adds, lifting his sharp eyes to mine, “those witches create some powerful offspring.”
I scoff and try to tug my shin closer to my body, out of his reach, but it’s no use. I’m already too tucked up against the window.
I snivel. “So all those years of torment at Bluestone were for nothing?”
Dray’s touch ghosts down my leg to the bunched-up material of my sock. “In retrospect, I might have made different choices if I had known what would be.”
I tug my leg aside. “That’s a crappy apology.”
The move gives him an opening—and my heart jolts inside of me, because Dray’s hand pushes between my squeezed thighs.
His dangerous gaze levels with mine. “It isn’t one.”
I clamp my legs shut against the intrusion. Outrage flares in my eyes, the sudden tension clenching my jaw.
But Dray’s fingers tighten around the meat of my thigh, a hearty grip that I don’t think he has any intention of releasing.
A breath shudders out of me.
I keep my legs clamped, my stare locked with his—and something ugly coils in my gut.
Father probably did let him come to my room. He held up the engagement I ran away from, the one I begged to be free of.
Years on, and nothing has changed.
Still just a pawn on this chessboard of the coven, of secrets and strategy.
I reach down for Dray’s wrist and grip it, tight.
I prompt, “What if I wasn’t a deadblood?”
His lashes lower, a faint frown etching onto his brow. Not the turn he expected.
My tone is a whisper, and it’s cruel, “What if I was a krum?”
He looks at me from beneath his lashes, shadows darkening his sharp eyes. “What an ugly thing to say.”
The softness of his voice is nothing short of appalled, like the disgust that threatens to curl his upper lip.
I double-down. “What if I was a krum, Dray?”
The words echo between us and our locked stares.
His hand is flat, trapped between my thighs, no longer gripping onto me.
I push, “What if I never was a deadblood… and all this time, I’ve really been a krum?”
Dray’s jaw tightens.
Then, after a heavy, thick moment, he tugs his hand out from between my thighs.
His tone is dark, “Is your mind normally rattling with utter nonsense?”
I loosen a trembling breath, the fear curling my toes against the tip of his shoes.
“What if I wasn’t ever allowed to read the deadblood books, because then I would figure out that my blood is supposed to reflect the skies, just like witchblood, and so if I ever checked for myself, and I saw that it doesn’t glitter, not even a little, then I would figure out that there’s no magic in me, and so… that would mean I’m a krum. What then?”
Dray is stone.
He is a statue crouched in front of me.
His face, his hands fisted at his knees… then the mask cracks.
His eyes suddenly flare, crushed diamonds caught in the moonlight, and his mouth curls. “You would say anything to end the arrangement—"
I lean forward, closer, and hiss, “You always hated me for what I am. But you were hating me for the wrong reasons, Dray. Doesn’t it make sense?
” I blink, and the tears roll down my cheeks.
“My father doesn’t love me. You said it yourself.
I was never allowed a phone or freedom, everything I did was monitored, and they never let Witchdoctor Urma treat me at Bluestone, not even for a scratch, and… I overheard them once.”
In a blink, Dray closes the slight distance between us. His knee digs into the floor and he snatches up my wrist, tight.
Through gritted teeth, his tone is dangerous, “What did you hear?”
I swallow down the thickness in my throat.
The danger of it, the risk of telling him, churns my stomach. Every bit of me aches to curl up into a ball and scream for help.
Just the sight of his fierce stare—
It shudders my spine.
But there’s a reason I’m telling him this.
This is the final card up my sleeve.
And it will ruin everything.
“My parents….” The tears tremble my whispered words, “wanted to pay off a witchdoctor. For blood tests. Your witchdoctor—and my blood tests. I think they gave him someone else’s blood.”
Dray’s fingers dig so hard into my wrist that the promise of bruises springs aches all over the bones.
It doesn’t stop me.
I push through the thumping of my heart. “When I was out there… in the krum world… I… I tested my blood.”
His lashes flutter slightly.
His face shutters.
Then, his grip tightens impossibly, and I should cry out from the pain, but I feel only that ache inside of me.
“Dray…” I smile something watery. “I’m a krum.”