Chapter 30 Say the Wrong Thing Repeatedly
(It’s a Special Talent)
Kazimir
We’d spent the rest of the day listening to the Alchemist drone on about ley line theory, ritual components, and the precise magical frequencies required to isolate a nexus. Under normal circumstances, I’d have found it fascinating.
Today, I’d barely heard a word.
The whispers had started again—faint at first, like the hiss of wind through dead leaves, but growing steadily louder as the day wore on. An insistent scratching at the back of my skull.
As we walked back to our apartment, Arabella and I maintained a careful distance from each other. We hadn’t spoken a word about last night. We’d been perfectly civil in front of the Alchemist—the picture of Dark Lord and lady, united in purpose if not in heart.
But now, alone in the corridor, each step echoed too loudly, each breath felt too shallow. Arabella walked beside me, close enough to touch but miles away in every way that mattered.
I should apologize. I knew that. Last night at the Gilded Gallows, I’d crossed a line.
The Twilight Wine had heightened my senses, my desire, my possessiveness—but it hadn’t robbed me of my faculties.
I’d known exactly what I was doing when I tried to compel Arabella to stay behind while I pursued Pip.
She defies you. She will always defy you.
The whisper slithered through my mind, cold and venomous. I shook my head, trying to dislodge it.
At our apartment, Arabella headed straight for our suite. I followed her inside, steeling myself for the conversation we needed to have.
Before I could utter a word, Arabella strode to the balcony’s double doors and flung them open. Cold wind rushed in, carrying the scent of ozone and distant rain. For one wild moment, I thought she might be planning to throw me off the balcony.
Then Nyx swooped down from the darkening sky, her massive form barely fitting through the doorway. The shadow dragon’s liquid silver eyes fixed on me with unmistakable hostility as it lumbered past me, heading straight for our bedroom.
“What’s she doing?” I asked, the first words I’d spoken directly to Arabella in hours.
“Going to bed,” Arabella replied, her voice neutral. Too neutral.
I followed her into the bedroom just in time to see Nyx sprawl across our bed—our very large bed, but not large enough for a dragon and two people.
The beast stretched luxuriously, her wings unfurling to touch the walls before settling back against her sides.
Her bulk took up nearly the entire surface, leaving room for maybe one small person to squeeze in beside her.
The message couldn’t have been clearer if Arabella had painted it on the wall in blood.
“Off,” I commanded, pointing to the floor.
Nyx opened one silver eye, regarded me with reptilian disdain, then closed it again.
A low growl rumbled from her throat as she sank deeper into the pillows, her claws shredding the silk with deliberate malice.
The same silk sheets I’d been hoping, in my more optimistic fantasies, to share only with Arabella tonight.
The beast mocks you, as does its mistress.
I rubbed the runes along my collarbone as a wave of frustration washed through me.
Everything felt louder than usual—my still-lingering headache from a day spent planning a complicated ley line ritual, the rustle of Nyx’s wings, the faint rush of blood in my ears.
If I closed my eyes, the new swirl of half words in my skull threatened to drown out my own thoughts.
I tried to focus on the sound of my breathing.
“Arabella, about last night—”
She turned to face me, arms crossed. The soft glow from the enchanted lamps caught in her golden hair, creating a halo effect that belied the steel in her gaze. “Don’t say it unless you actually mean it.”
I did mean it. Mostly. The part of me that wasn’t still seething with frustration, that wasn’t being needled by the dark whispers, genuinely regretted my actions.
“I shouldn’t have tried to compel you,” I said, the words coming out stiffer than I’d intended. “It was… inappropriate.”
Arabella’s eyebrows rose. “Inappropriate?”
“What would you prefer I call it?” I snapped, then immediately regretted it. This wasn’t going well.
“I’d prefer you understand what you did,” she hissed. “You were ready to rip Pip apart for betraying Skyspire, but you don’t see how you betrayed me?”
I ran a hand through my hair, tugging at the roots in frustration. “It’s not the same thing.”
“Isn’t it?” She stepped closer, her hazel eyes flashing. “You used your power against me, Kaz.”
Arabella’s resistance to my dominion magic was one of the first things that had intrigued me about her.
Trying to use my compulsion on her was a low, dirty trick I hadn’t attempted since the day we’d met.
It was a fundamental violation of the strange, unspoken terms of our truce, our partnership, our… whatever this was.
The whisper grew louder. I pressed my fingers to my temples, trying to focus. A corner of my thoughts insisted I should just double down, push her to forgive me, reclaim the upper hand.
Another, darker voice whispered that she was the one who should be begging me. The violent hiss of that second voice startled me.
“I was trying to protect you,” I said, the excuse sounding hollow even to my own ears.
“From a sixteen-year-old boy who might not even have been there?” She yanked the braid loose from her hair with enough force to make me wince. “Or were you protecting your ego from the possibility that Pip got away?”
“Fine,” I conceded. “I wanted to catch him. He betrayed us, Arabella. He let the Hero’s Guild into our home. Sims died because of him.”
“And I wanted to help you catch him!” She took a step toward me and pointed her finger at my chest. “But instead of treating me like a partner, you tried to force me to stay behind like a child.”
I had no good answer for that. She was right. In that moment of rage and fear—fear that Pip would escape, fear that Arabella might be hurt—I had reached for the easiest solution. Control. Dominance. The very things I’d sworn I wouldn’t use against her.
How dare she question you.
“Kazimir, you commanded your shadow warriors to watch over me like I was some prized jewel.”
“You are prized,” I snapped, voice rising despite myself. The shadowy voice inside my head hissed encouragement. “Don’t you get that? Why do you think I’m with you?”
“Why are you with me?” she asked.
The question caught me off guard. “Why am I—”
“Why are you with me, Kaz, and not some vapid princess?”
I blinked, momentarily thrown. I thought back to that day months ago when I’d chosen her from a stack of candidates.
A simple sketch had captured something in her expression—mischief dancing at the corners of her mouth, intelligence burning in her eyes.
The reports of her setting suitors on fire had sealed the deal.
She’d defied me from the moment we met, and I’d never been so enchanted.
Tell her she is nothing but a tool for your power.
“I like you,” I said, ignoring the whisper. “And you’re sexy.”
I knew that was the wrong answer even as my stupid mouth supplied it. The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. Not literally—though with our combined magical potential, that was always a possibility—but emotionally. Arabella’s face went carefully blank, a sure sign I’d fucked up royally.
“That’s it?” she asked, her voice deceptively light. “You kidnapped me, married me, and bound our lives together because I’m likable and sexy?”
Put that way, it did sound rather thin.
“What do you want me to say, Arabella?” I spread my hands. The dragon was now emitting a low, threatening rumble. “That I was drawn to your defiance? Your strength? The way you never back down, even when facing a Dark Lord who could snap your neck with a thought?”
“I want you to tell me the truth,” she said. “All of it.”
The truth. Such a simple request, and yet so impossible to fulfill.
How could I tell her that from the moment I saw her, something in me recognized her?
That when she stood before me on that road, refusing to cower, I felt as if I’d been waiting my entire life for someone who would look at me and see not just the monster, but the man?
Weakness. This is weakness. She makes you weak.
“You’re my wife,” I said, the word feeling inadequate for what she had become to me.
She stepped into my space, glaring up at me. “Do you feel anything for me at all?”
“Of course I do!” I roared. “Do you think I’d let just anyone see me collapse in a heap of agony? Or tell them my deepest secrets? I’ve killed men for looking at their reflections in my polished boots, Arabella. You have turned my entire world upside down, and you’re asking me if I feel something?”
“Then what is it?” she demanded, tears welling in her eyes, which only made me angrier. “What is it you feel? Say it!”
I reached for her, but she stepped back.
The words she wanted—needed—to hear lodged in my throat. Those three words. The ones I’d never said to anyone, not even my mother. Especially not my mother, whose idea of “love” involved carving runes into her son’s bones.
Love is a lie. A trick. A weapon to be used against you. The whisper was almost a shout now, the voice disturbingly familiar. I pressed my palms against my eyes, trying to block it out.
“You can’t say it either,” I pointed out, deflecting.
“I fed my life force into your precious artifact!” Her voice cracked. “I literally poured pieces of my soul into that crown to save you. If that’s not—” She stopped herself. “What more proof do you need?”
“Words,” I snarled, closing the distance between us and lowering my voice. “Just three simple words that you seem as incapable of saying as I am. They don’t matter.”
The moment the sentence left my mouth, I knew I’d made a catastrophic error. Arabella went very, very still. Then, without a word, she walked to the wardrobe, pulled out my cloak, and threw it at my chest.
“Get out,” she said quietly.
“Arabella—”