Page 29 of Married By Treachery

“I imagine that person would be happy to fix it for you.”

Jake turned his head and looked at her fully. “Happy? I don’t believe my mother is familiar with the term—”

Raquel sat forward. “Wait, yourmothermade that coat for you?” To this, Jake tipped his head a fraction, and Raquel could hardly believe it! But she had to believe it, because Jake couldn’t lie. “You’re saying your own mother performed treason against one son in order to help the other…?”

“It’s complicated…” Jake waved two dismissive fingers.

“Complicated? That’s abhorrent!”

"I would argue that offering one’s only daughter to the Forest kith in order to protect your village another seven years is equally repugnant, but we all do what we must, it seems…”

Raquel pressed her lips together. “So where is he now—your brother?”

“Probably suffering a migraine from the sedative I slipped into his drink—but anyway, you’ve definitely complicated matters for me.”

“And those matters are…?”

Jake smiled wickedly, then lifted his goblet to his lips again.

“I see. Yet again, I’ve touched upon something you either cannot or will not share,” Raquel chided, and Jake didn’t deny it. “Well, whatever those matters are, you clearly still need your disguise.”

“That does seem to follow, doesn’t it?”

“Are you going to tell mewhy?”

He pulled the goblet away. His eyes shone, and a slow smile stretched his lips—so devastating that it nearly stopped her heart. “Would you believe me if I said that I find you woefully intriguing and want you all for myself?”

Those blasted butterflies filled her chest and started filling her limbs too. “No. Not in a hundred years.”

“You are so consistently suspicious, my bride.”

“And you already admitted that you’re not in the habit of getting attached.”

“People change with the right motivation.”

Raquel graced him with a look of condescension, to which his smile only widened, and then he tipped his goblet toward her. “But you truly are lucky to be alive. There was a good amount of Depraved poison in your veins.”

“Depraved… is that what you call those winged monsters?”

Jake took a small sip from his goblet. “Though I think I like your terms better.”

“And what happens if one is infected with Depraved poison?”

“If one is lucky, one dies.”

“And if one isunlucky?”

Jake’s smile turned mirthless, and that kith wildness reflected in his eyes. “You become one of them.”

“Oh.” Again, she remembered the Jake from her dreams. The one who had saidI cannot stop it.

Wasthiswhat he’d been trying to stop? This plague upon his land? A disease that rotted stags and infected the forest with mist and turned their people into Depraved?

“When did it start?” Raquel asked. It was a strange question to ask, because it followed the statement Dream Jake had made, but if real and present Jake found it odd, she couldn’t tell.

“Nearly half a century ago,” he answered.

Raquel stilled.

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