Chapter 8
Ariadne could not think straight. Beside her, Camilla and Revelie stood shoulder-to-shoulder, creating a wall between her and the door that now shook as Loren shouted her name again and yanked at the latch.
A great thud told her all she needed to know about how incensed the vile man had become. He would, indeed, break down the door.
“Ariadne!” Madan’s voice punched through her screaming thoughts. “Get out of there now!”
“There is nowhere to go,” she whispered back and turned to look back at the book. The page swam before her eyes and she hated that the surge of fear had tears collecting in her eyes. “Did you get the ritual?”
“Fuck the ritual—run.”
That told her all she needed to know. Ariadne shifted the book to one hand, grasped the page and a dozen after, and carefully tore them free of the spine. If she needed to run or fight, she could not protect the book, too.
“The balcony,” Ariadne said at the sound of wood splintering, and she dropped the book on the floor. “We can jump from the balcony.”
As though of one mind, Camilla and Revelie nodded and started for the outside doors.
Ariadne followed, folding the pages and shoving them down the front of her dress.
She should have asked Revelie to add pockets to the damn skirt, but had not considered the need for them.
Then again, anything would have been better than trying to hide paper in her bosom.
“Are they coming?” Camilla asked, looking back as she fumbled with the latch, her hands shaking.
“Yes,” came Madan’s response, no doubt having heard the question through Ariadne’s connection to Almandine. “Azriel’s on his way.”
Relief did not last long.
Wood splintering, Loren shoved through the broken doors to the library, his face pulled into a vicious snarl.
Eyes of ice pierced her with such hatred, she was certain that if he did not kill her outright in that moment, he would ensure for her a life of absolute misery.
His hair, so perfectly slicked back from his face at the ceremony and reception, now fell half in his face, the silver of it shining in the candlelight of the library.
At Loren’s back, Nikolai followed, his sword drawn and eyes wide in shock at the sight of the three of them. He stopped short, looking around the room as though for an adversary he could not find.
“Why did you lock the door, my pet?” Loren spat the words, his attention flickering from the stack of books to the one she had deposited, still open to a page of dhemonic runes. He stooped to pick it up and scan the page before holding it out. “Keeping secrets?”
Blood drained from Ariadne’s face in a rush, and she hissed to her friends, “Go!”
Loren took a calculated step forward. “Jump from the balcony? My soldiers will just hunt you down and drag you back here before you can get off the grounds.”
Grappling for something—anything—to distract him, Ariadne took a step forward. “Loren, this is not what it looks like.”
“No?” He shook the book. “So finding my wife reading bedtime stories from dhemons on our wedding night is not what it looks like?”
The absolute fool had not even read the notes written in common.
Perhaps the book would survive him after all.
But he looked down at it, the pages flopping to where she had so crudely severed paper from spine, and drew a finger down the frayed edges that remained.
Again, his mouth twisted, this time into a vicious grin.
“What are you hiding, Wife?” Loren raised his gaze slowly, and it felt like a punch to the gut when it landed on her. Another step forward.
Ariadne lurched back involuntarily and breathed, “Nothing.”
“Are you afraid of me?”
In a flash of gold and ebony, Camilla and Revelie stepped forward to create that wall between them once more.
Ariadne’s heart stuttered at the sudden movement, then cracked at the way Revelie’s shoulders shook from the effort of standing before the man who had made her life a living hell for the last several weeks.
Amusement glittered in Loren’s eyes. “Your new watchdogs are not nearly as frightening as the one that abandoned you.”
Biting her tongue, Ariadne glared back from over her friends’ shoulders. She would not let him get a rise out of her. Not when the one he thought abandoned her was on his way.
“Step aside.” His order, directed at Camilla and Revelie, was sharp and final.
Camilla stood straighter and stepped forward. “Fuck you.”
Crack!
Everything happened so fast. One moment, her friend stood proudly in front of the King of Valenul.
The next, Loren struck. The back of his ring-laden hand connected with Camilla’s face so hard, she crashed to the floor in a spray of blood.
For what felt like an eternity, yet could only have been a heartbeat of time, Ariadne stared in shock.
Revelie’s shriek yanked her back into reality. She dove for Camilla, turning her friend over to reveal a bruise already blooming across her cheek.
A strong hand closed around Ariadne’s forearm, pulling her forward.
Her heart flew into her throat, and she yanked back, ripping herself free of Loren’s grip and fumbling behind her back for the balcony lock.
The space between them shrank as he surged forward to slam his free palm on the door to hold it closed.
“You belong to me,” he snarled and threw the book aside, where it skittered into a lit grate, the old and dry pages catching fire.
Ariadne watched in horror as the answers to so many questions went up in flames, then turned back to the King, his face mere inches from hers.
“And I will make you watch as I erase those monsters from this land.”
In an instant, Kall’s training returned. Ariadne ducked under his outstretched arm and ran for the door. When Loren wrapped an arm around her waist, hauling her back, she screamed in a mixture of fear and frustration. She writhed in his hold, the panic overwhelming any logical thought.
Sabharni, ydhom.
Ariadne screamed again as her feet lifted from the floor, but this time she threw her upper body forward. The sudden momentum had Loren’s hands slipping just enough for her to twist free of his grip.
“You lying bitch!” Loren reached for her again.
Slapping his hand away, she danced back, tripping over the hem of her wedding dress.
Ariadne grabbed the back of a chair to keep from falling and jerked her skirt out from under her heel with a resounding tear.
Back across the room, Revelie held Camilla as the latter opened her eyes in confusion.
But Loren no longer looked at them. He focused solely on her—exactly as she had hoped.
“If you thought for one second,” Ariadne snapped back, “that I would ever choose you over him, you are more thick-headed than I thought.”
Loren growled in frustration and stormed forward, shrinking the distance between them with his hand closing into a fist.
But this time Ariadne was ready. The ex-General had not yet pulled back his hand to strike before she moved, slamming her own fist into his gut and cracking the other across his jaw. His head jerked to the side, unprepared to defend against the attack.
Ariadne’s knuckles smarted, but she put her hands back up in front of her face before Kall could tap her chin—no, before Loren could get in a real punch.
Keeping her feet spread and balanced, she sucked in a steadying breath as her opponent turned back to her with vampiric speed.
His open hand never made it to her face thanks to her own viper-quick reactions, and he snarled in fury.
“You do not have the privilege of choice,” Loren snapped, the words a distorted echo of her own on the night of their engagement celebration. Except when she had spoken them to Azriel, her true husband had responded by begging her to choose him.
Edging her way back toward the library door, Ariadne pivoted to keep Loren and Nikolai in her line of sight. That the King’s Sword had yet to react to any of this only made her more nervous. For what was he waiting? True danger to his King?
Behind Loren, Revelie helped Camilla to her feet, where the latter swayed dangerously, her face already deeply bruised.
So long as Loren kept his focus on her, however, Ariadne knew they would be fine.
At least until Azriel arrived. What frightened her most was that her husband had yet to make it into range for her to communicate with him fully. Why could she not feel him?
Loren followed like an incensed hound cornering his prey as Ariadne continued toward the doors. To her surprise, Nikolai stepped back. Perhaps he had been instructed to let Loren handle any uprising. Or, more likely, he knew better than to get in Loren’s way when he was on the hunt.
All the better for her.
One step over the threshold, Ariadne turned and picked up her skirts to sprint down the hall away from the library.
Fear almost blinded her as she raced back over the floors that felt so familiar and yet entirely different from her childhood.
It was not running that caused the sudden dump of adrenaline—she was accustomed to the fast pace from all her runs through the forest alongside Kall.
It was the sound of Loren’s boots right on her heels.
There was something about the chase that thrilled Loren.
It delighted his senses to once again be hurtling in pursuit of a foe—even if that foe was his own wife.
She had reawakened in him the very reason he had chosen to forego life as a future Councilman and climb the ranks within Valenul’s prestigious military instead. Every part of him craved the hunt.
That Ariadne chose to put up such a violent fight had him more than excited. This was what he had hoped for: the opportunity to take a wildfire such as this and smother it. It would take time, this much he knew, but that only called to the part of him that yearned to tame those wild beasts.