Chapter 8 #2
I stepped back and grabbed my wrists, feeling the roughened, raised skin and remembering the way I knelt by that exact same crackling hearth, stoking the fire for Fairwitch, building it every morning to their exact liking.
I whirled to face the big windows on the back wall, staring at the dark forest that spread out behind Fairwitch Isle, the same windows Fairwitch threatened to throw me out the one time I’d refused to rebuild the fire.
I’d already built it four times, and Fairwitch wanted me to snuff it out and start again for the fifth time.
I’d turned and told them if they were so particular about their fire, they should probably do it themselves.
I could fling you out this window right now, Fairwitch had threatened while they stared at me with their cold golden eyes. No one would miss you. No one would even know you were gone.
The dark marble floors under my heels were so shiny, like someone had just polished them, and I felt the wet sponge under my hand, more memories barraging me. I would scrub tirelessly, Fairwitch never happy with my work, forcing me to scrub until my hands were raw and blistered.
Lor put a hand on my arm. “Aoife,” he said. “Are you alright?”
“I can’t stay here,” I said, voice sharper than I meant as I wrenched out of his grasp, the moment between us ruined.
I didn’t want to be touched right now.
“What’s wrong?” His entire body tensed, brows furrowing.
I let out a shaky breath. “I won’t stay here. I can stay with . . . Ambrose.” He was the only person I could think of in the moment, but I immediately realized I’d made a mistake saying the faerie’s name.
“Ambrose?” Lor asked sharply, and I nodded, feeling a familiar stubbornness rise up in me.
A muscle feathered in his jaw. “You can’t stay at Ambrose’s house.”
Anger shot through me. He couldn’t command me. He wasn’t my king. “Why not?”
He looked at me in disbelief. “Because you’re queen of Fairwitch Isle, and you need to start acting like it.”
I took another step back, shocked by his audacity. “Excuse me?”
His jaw locked underneath his stubble. “I’ve allowed you time these last few months.
I haven’t asked that you attend any meetings or attend to your queenly duties because I wanted to give you space.
Time to see your people, time to come to terms with all of this, but you need to start acting like the queen Castle has deemed you to be. ”
He’d said a lot of words, a lot of things that stoked my building rage, but my mind lingered on one single word. “Allowed?” My hands bunched into fists. “You’re allowing me? You are not in charge of me.”
He clenched his teeth together. “If you don’t want to sleep in this room, don’t want to be next to my chambers, that’s fine. But you do have to stay in the castle. You can’t just keep sleeping wherever you feel like.”
So his room was next door. “Why?” I asked. “What’s wrong with me staying where I choose to?”
“What if there’s an attack?” Lor asked, exasperation filling his voice. “You’re queen. You have to be in the castle so the royal guard knows exactly where you are and they can do their jobs and protect you.”
“They’ll know where I am at Ambrose’s,” I said, knowing he was making sense, that I would be safest here, that a queen should reside in her castle, but I couldn’t stand his tone, the way he was speaking to me, commanding me just like Fairwitch had, like I wasn’t a partner but someone beneath him.
He was pacing now, shoving his hand through his hair, clearly agitated. “What if someone decides to target Ambrose’s house because the queen is residing there? Would you really put him at risk, Aoife?”
I swallowed thickly. “I’m sure we have guards at our disposal—”
He whirled to face me, anger rolling off him in waves.
“We don’t. If you’d attended any of the meetings you were invited to, you would know that.
We don’t have the resources to stage guards outside someone’s house.
Like I said, if your objection is sleeping in the room next to mine, you do not need to worry.
I have no intention of invading your privacy, of making unwanted advances on you—”
“And like I told you the day you broke my curse, I would kill you if you tried.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Must you be so difficult?”
“Must you be so self-righteous?”
He spread out his arms. “Why won’t you stay in this room? I can’t help you if you won’t open up to me.”
I could’ve told him. I could’ve told him every sordid detail of my time as a slave here.
I could’ve told him how I was mistreated in this room countless times, but I didn’t want to remind him that I was a slave anymore than I wanted to be reminded myself.
He already didn’t see me as his equal, and I refused to give him any more reason to see me as inferior.
Besides I shouldn’t have to tell him any of it for him understand.
It should’ve been enough for me to say I didn’t want to sleep here.
That should’ve been the end of this conversation.
“We all have to make sacrifices, Aoife,” he said, voice hard, and I wondered what he could possibly know of sacrifice. “Especially as king and queen. We have to do things we don’t want. Like getting married.”
His words were a punch to the gut, all the hope I’d held for this marriage knocked from me.
“Good to know how you feel about marriage,” I said, voice stiff.
“You answer to your people.” He jabbed a finger at me. “You owe them doing your absolute best, being the queen they deserve. That means not wasting our precious resources because you want to sleep at your lover’s house.”
So he knew about me and Ambrose. I could’ve corrected him, told him that Ambrose and I hadn’t been lovers since our betrothal, but I was too angry. Let him think what he wanted.
I raised my chin, hating him so much. Hating him with every fiber of my being. “I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to. And I don’t answer to anyone.”
He shook his head. “Then you don’t deserve that crown on your head.”
And with that, he walked away, clicking the door closed behind him as he went into his room without so much as a backward glance.