Chapter 9 Cyrene
CHAPTER NINE
CYRENE
Cordelia floated up over a hedge and sat on top, peering down at us.
Sunlight filtered through her semi-transparent skirts, and she crossed one leg primly over the other and pulled out what looked like an antique dagger to trim her nails.
“Your nails grow?” I asked, though that was the least of my concerns.
She didn’t look up. “Why wouldn’t they?”
“Nails?” Kieran asked, peering my way. His gaze followed mine. “You’re not speaking to me, are you?”
“Cordelia is here again.”
His frown only deepened. “Oh.”
“How long have you been inside the maze?” I asked her.
“From the moment you entered, my dear. Where else would I be but with the sole person who can interact with me? Do you realize how long it’s been since I spoke to someone who could actually hear, let alone see, me?”
From the moment we entered, huh?
“You played with the maze, didn’t you?”
She pressed her palm against her chest and did a decent job of looking shocked. “Me? What exactly are you accusing me of?”
“You heard me,” I half-growled, telling Kieran what she’d said.
“See? See?” Kieran crowed. “I didn’t get us lost.” He pointed to a low garden. “She did.”
“She’s sitting there.” I gestured in the general direction. “And you’re right. You didn’t get us lost.”
Cordelia huffed. “Don’t feed his ego. It needs no further fuel.”
“He’s not that bad.”
He looked away, but not before I caught the flicker of warmth in his expression, the kind of look that made me forget we weren’t supposed to still matter to each other.
“Thanks for the stellar endorsement,” he said.
“You haunted this maze,” I grumbled.
Grinning, Kieran leaned close. “You tell her.”
He was too distracting, too appealing, especially when he smiled.
“I prefer the term curated.” Cordelia blew on her nails and squinted at the results. “You two needed privacy, and I needed entertainment. Everybody wins.”
“If by winning you mean emotional chaos and possible dehydration from blushing,” I muttered.
Kieran’s mouth quirked at one corner, revealing the sharp bite of his fangs. “You’re blushing?”
“From rage.” I lied. Badly. Sighing, I glanced around the overgrown garden.
The hedges shimmered under the witchlights, and the air hung heavy with the scent of roses and damp moss.
It was lovely in a mildly cursed way. “If you’re trying to play matchmaker, I assure you it’s unnecessary. We’re already married.”
“More or less,” he said.
I leaned away from him, frowning. “What does that mean? We both said I do. You bit me. Sucked my blood.”
“A technicality,” he said. “Purely ceremonial.”
“Ceremonial? You looked like you enjoyed it.”
His eyes darkened. “So did you.”
“Oh yes, more of this! The heat. The passion.” Cordelia removed her ghostly shoes and started hacking away with the dagger at her toenails.
“Stop talking to me,” I said.
Kieran stiffened. “If you insist.”
“Not you. Her.”
“Oh.” He peered around. “She’s still here?”
“Unfortunately.”
Cordelia sniffed. “I know when I’m not wanted.”
“And yet, there you sit, gouging away at your toenails with, of all things, a dagger.”
“If I don’t keep them trimmed, I’ll get fungus.”
I tilted my head. “Ghosts can get fungus in their nails?”
“Why wouldn’t they? As for you two being wed, paperwork isn’t passion, darling. I couldn’t help but overhear your dilemma.”
“We’ll figure it out.”
“What you two need is heat, tension, and some smolder.” Her grin full of fangs, she leaned forward, almost to the point I thought she’d fall off the hedge. “A scandalous moment will convince him.”
“What’s she saying?” he asked, sounding intrigued.
“She’s giving me advice on how to convince your advisors that our marriage is real.”
His mouth quirked up at one corner. “Ah. And what does our resident specter recommend?”
“Kisses. Lots of kisses,” she said. “And get closer in that bed, if you please.”
“Pray tell me you didn’t watch last night.”
She smirked. “Not too much.”
Frustration made me want to yank on my hair. “Nothing is happening if you’re watching. This I swear.”
“A voyeur ghost?” Kieran said with a touch of awe.
“Not if I have any say in it.” I gave her a stern look. “I want you to promise you won’t watch.” Not that anything was going to happen between us, but still.
“If you insist,” she grumbled.
“I do.”
She gave me a pert nod and went back to attacking her toenails. “Tell him he needs to redecorate the castle.”
“How will that help convince the advisors?”
“I already told you how to do that. This is to thank me for all my kind assistance. If he redecorates…” A conniving look slanted across her face. “I promise I won’t watch.”
“You’re resorting to blackmail?” I huffed.
“What’s she saying?” Kieran asked.
“I prefer to call it a friendly agreement between friends,” she said.
“I won’t be coerced.” I turned to Kieran. “She says you should redecorate the castle.”
His brow knit. “Truly?”
I nodded.
She paused, the dagger hovering over her right pinky toe. “It’s so dreary I keep mistaking the drapes for mourning shrouds.”
I relayed the comment.
Kieran’s brows lifted, and the faintest smile tugged at his mouth. “Tell her I’ll take her advice under advisement.”
I turned into their intermediary. “She says that’s the sort of halfhearted promise men make right before ignoring a woman’s opinion entirely.”
His soft laugh rang out, rumbling through the air. I found myself watching him longer than was wise.
Cordelia clapped her hands. “See? He’s laughing. I’m already improving this marriage.”
“Would you prefer I redecorate first or laugh more often?” Kieran asked, amusement flickering across his face.
Cordelia folded her arms on her chest, the dagger literally passing through her wispy body. “Both. Immediately.”
He looked at me after I’d shared what she said. “Is she always this demanding?”
“Only when she’s awake.”
He shook his head. “Charming.”
“She’s incorrigible.”
“I hear you,” she sang out, focusing on her toes again.
“I like her.” Kieran sounded faintly surprised by that. “She has spirit.”
Cordelia preened. “Tell him he’s correct. And tell him I want my portrait done. A large one. And I want it to hang in the ballroom. If the lighting’s right, I’ll look luminous.”
When I passed that along, Kieran grinned. “Luminous, noted.”
“And I want a gold frame,” she said. “Not silver. Silver makes me look washed out.”
“Does she plan to redecorate the entire kingdom or just the castle?” he asked.
“Both,” I said, passing along her words. “And possibly your wardrobe. She’s not a fan of black.”
“Then she’s in for disappointment.” He smoothed his sleeve. “All I own is black.”
“Truly?”
“Truly.”
“So black it is,” he said.
I grunted. “Of course you’d defend your aesthetic.”
“My aesthetic hides blood stains.”
“How convenient.”
“I haven’t always worn black,” he said.
Cordelia gasped, her hand pressed to her chest. “He owns other colors?”
I rolled my eyes. “I suspect not.”
Kieran shook his head after I told him what she was saying. “The dead are terribly judgmental.”
“You have no idea,” I said.
Cordelia floated down from her perch to hover in front of us.
“Your husband is handsome, though. I’ll give him that.
Brooding. Tragic. The sort of man who looks like he keeps melancholy poetry hidden in a locked drawer.
” She fluttered her lashes. “The sort who probably writes stories about blood and moonlight.”
I told him what she said.
“I prefer essays on survival.” Kieran showed a hint of fang when he smiled. “But I don’t write poetry.”
“Not even short ones?” she asked, tilting her head, me relaying her side of the conversation.
“I’m afraid not,” he said.
“Then you should start. Nothing redeems a brooding man faster than emotional vulnerability and a touch of verse.”
“Noted,” he said gravely. “I’ll add it to my royal duties along with outfitting myself in a color other than black.”
“While you’re at it, pick your wife some flowers,” Cordelia said. “Not those pathetic ones they prop up in vases in the front hall. Real ones. With thorns.”
I rolled my eyes. “Cordelia, I’m not telling him your romantic advice.”
“I’m helping.”
“You’re meddling.”
“Semantics.” She turned to Kieran, though he was peering a bit off her right shoulder. “You’re welcome. And now I’ll leave you two alone. Try not to combust before I find you again.”
“Cordelia—”
But she was already shimmering out of sight, trailing laughter and the faint scent of lilac.
Silence dropped like a blanket around us.
The day stretched around us, full of rustling leaves and whispering fountains in the distance.
“She’s quite something,” Kieran said, settling back on the bench, draping his arm across the back, above my shoulders.
My heart gave an embarrassing little flutter. He wasn’t touching me, but the space between us felt charged.
“Cordelia is an acquired taste.”
“Much like you.”
I snorted. “Don’t start.”
“Start what?”
“That tone,” I said. “The one that sounds like sin and diplomacy had a baby.”
His grin sharpened, but his smile faded too fast, replaced by something quieter.
We sat there, two strangers who used to be something else.
“Why did you disappear?” I asked.
His hand stilled on the back of the bench.
“Six years ago,” I said. “You didn’t just vanish. You left without a word.”
He blinked down at me, studying my face. “You don’t know?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t ask.”
“My parents died. I was called back to take the throne.”
The world tilted. “Oh,” I whispered. It wasn’t hard to understand what he must’ve been feeling, having lost my own parents when I was young.
“You weren’t supposed to know,” he said. “The crown demanded silence.” His voice carried that quiet kind of ache that crawls under your skin and stays.
“You could’ve written.”
“Perhaps I did.”
I tilted my head, gazing up at him. “Did you?”
He met my eyes, and the look in his made my heart stumble. “Yes.”
“I didn’t receive a note.”
“We need to discover why.”
“It would be easy to say you sent one when you didn’t.”