Page 265 of Kingdoms of Night

“She wanted you to have this.”

There was something in her father’s tone. Something she had never heard before. Had he just choked on those words?

Enid could only stare at him. She had no idea where this was going. She often didn’t with her father, which was why she wanted out of his garden. She wanted a place where her roots could feel settled, could reach deep and not stay so near the surface, always ready to move someplace new.

Without another word, her father turned on his spiked heel and was gone. The clouds moved in the moment he left. A chill ran down her spine.

He was up to something. He had to be. She just didn’t know what.

What she did know was that she couldn’t leave here fast enough.

CHAPTERTWELVE

Every day of his life, even when he was a young boy, Geraint slipped with ease from dreaming to wakefulness. His had been a charmed life, born the youngest of the royal family of Dummonia, which had been the actual place of the fabled tales ofOne Thousand and One Nights.

His mother had been a Saxon princess from the kingdom of Dummonia. His father was the king of Al-Maghreb, what is present day Morocco. Their wedding had been arranged, but they fell in love as she told him fantastical stories for the first one thousand and one nights of their marriage.

In his youth, as a prince, there had been servants at his beck and call, though he rarely wanted for anything. His parents had doted on him, and he had looked up to his brothers. His reality was far better than any dream could hope to be, and each morning, he was eager to return to it. This morning, he dug into his dreams, not wanting to fall out of them.

Geraint’s dreams were a pastoral of pleasure. A sweetness so vivid he could taste the colors. In fact, he would swear he did taste the honey of the flowers that surrounded him. The honied nectar inside his mind threatened to drown him, only it wasn’t a threat.

He wanted to suffocate in the delicious ambrosia. He wanted to be buried in the velvety petals. He wanted to get drunk on the dream of Enid.

He knew it was a dream. Knew it because the memories of last night were all too real at the front of his brain. He pushed down the flubs he’d made and clung tightly to the fantasy unfolding in his head.

In his dream, Enid came to him. She listened with wide eyes as he made his vows. Her hands fluttered to her chest when he came down onto his knee and pledged his life to her. She opened her arms to him when he leaned in for a kiss. But for some reason, he couldn’t move his arms.

Geraint woke. His eyes slammed open. His breath came out in a harsh exhale. He sat up, but he didn’t get far. Only the right side of his body moved. His left wrist was attached to the headboard of the bed. With twine. Her twine.

There were no thorns like the first time she’d bound him in self-defense and he’d come away scarred. The tie of the vines wasn’t tight. He could slip out of it, but part of him didn’t want to.

The green tendrils curled around his wrists in an intricate way, almost like a bracelet. It was decorative, not defensive. This was a part of her wrapped around him. It was as close as he would get to her for some time since she was not in the bed with him.

Geraint flopped back down. This was not how he expected things to go the morning after his wedding.

Wedding.

Marriage.

He was married.

His head fogged even further, like a hangover. Though he’d never experienced one before. He was moderate in his drinking, as he was in all facets of his life.

Except, apparently, when it came to this woman. His wife.

He had a wife. Because he was married.

Geraint kept waiting for that fact to freak him out. It didn’t. The rightness of it made an audible click somewhere in his chest. Or perhaps that was the vine snapping its hold on him so that he could rise from the bed and find his wife.

He knew that what he’d said to her had been wrong. He’d watched the world evolve enough to know that women were indeed equal in most cases and superior in others.

The fact that Enid had sexual experience bothered him. Not because he wanted to be her first—mostly. But because he wanted to be her only.

He might not have been her first and only, but he would be her last. And he would be her best. He just had to find her and seduce her. Which sounded like a great plan for the day.

He dressed quickly, checking that the pulsing seed had remained tucked safely away in his tunic. When he went to the door, he saw Wain waiting against the other wall in the hall. His brother lifted his head and surveyed Geraint with a lazy gaze and a crooked grin.

“Just as I thought; you bombed,” said Wain. “And she tied you up again. Kinky.”

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