Page 135 of Conspirators' Kingdom

“If not now, when it’s just us, then when?”

She bit her lip.

“You’re not weak. You’re afraid. You haven’t had a single moment where you could come apart at the seams, like any sane person would after facing a gods-damned feral dragon.”

Like he was about to. Didn’t she know how terrified he’d been? How that fear was still creeping at the edges of him, fraying him?

“And yet you’re perfectly composed,” she accused him, hugging her sides.

He grabbed her wrist, leading her into his pocket realm.

“Come.”

When they were through to the other side, he dropped his glamour. She blinked in surprise. No doubt she saw the dark circles under his eyes, the lines bracketing his mouth. No doubt she could see the fear that stalked him. All the anxieties he couldn’t speak aloud for fear he would make them real.

He was not a good man and she could do better, or at least be safer. And as events had proven, he was a piss-poor protector—and he wanted to be a better one. He’d never imagined feeling so deeply for the co-conspirator he’d planned to choose for a wife. Before Taisiya, a wife had been little more an abstract concept. He hadn’t planned on caring whether she lived or died, whether she was scared or needed comfort—he hadn’t planned on needing her so badly he couldn’t breathe without her. Now she was part of him—he couldn’t let her go any more than he could keep her safe—and he was going mad from helplessness.

“If you think I’m not one hair away from coming undone, from letting heart-stopping terror at losing you overwhelm me, from the need to hold you so tightly I might break you, then you’re not looking closely enough.”

Taisiya searched Mereruka’s eyes, fierce and vulnerable. She reached a shaking hand up to his cheek, her bottom lip trembling. Only in front of her would he ever reveal such an expression. He gave her permission she didn’t know she needed to be as vulnerable before him as he was before her. When she spoke, her prickly pride was useless, leaving an ache in her throat as it tightened with emotion.

“I thought I would lose you and I couldn’t—”

He interrupted her with a brutal kiss, his arms crushing her tight as his hands fisted her gown and hair.

“You were never supposed to turn around and fight that fucking dragon!” he roared desperately. “You were supposed to be safe!”

Tears stung her eyes, not because of his anger, not at his words, but because she felt the same bone-deep fear as he did. He released her hair and she wrapped her arms around him, petting his back.

“You will never do anything like that again! I will put you in an impregnable fortress, surrounded by every luxury and protection where you—”

“Will die of boredom and be entirely useless. That isn’t why you married me,” she reminded him.

When she’d seen him broken, bloody and bruised in the desert, she wanted to do the same. It was why her heart fluttered to hear the sentiments on his lips. This feeling in her was mirrored in him—fear and longing. A fierce and terrifying love that would destroy anything that imperilled the other. She supposed if he were a villain, then she was his perfect match.

He held her face in his hands, forcing her to look into his citrine eyes.

“That was before. Before you were necessary to my very existence. I can’t live without you, Taisiya. I don’t even want to contemplate a world in which you don’t exist. I would burn such a hell-scape down to the bedrock. The only thing I want more than the throne is your safety. Except I need the damned throne to keep you safe!”

He was plucking the words right out of her mind.

“If you’d wanted a pet to keep safe and coddle, you chose poorly.” She grinned ruefully, knowing it applied equally to her.

Safe would have been marrying an elderly nobilissimus with too much money and too few family members. Safe would have been accepting the first ambitious merchant as a husband and retiring from scheming. Safe would have kept her from making their bargain. Safe would have been convincing him to give up his schemes and ambitions. But she’d chosen him and his mad schemes in the end, safety be damned.

“Damnit, Taisiya—”

She pressed a finger to her teal lips.

“I love you too, Meri.”

He looked as though a trap had sprung on him and he’d only just seen the bars slamming down around him. He laughed, a touch hysterically. Was this the first time she’d said it, either of them had said it? Mereruka looked as if it had only now occurred to him what this wild thing in his chest was.

“I have liked you from the start, Taisiya, but I suppose I am well and truly caught now.”

“You will never escape me,” she agreed.

“I almost wish wehadbeen bound by that bloody marriage oath. It would be a comfort now to know I wouldn’t have to live in a world without you. I’m a fool.”

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