Page 14 of Straw and Gold
“What could I possibly have learned from a fifteen-year-old—seven years younger than me?”
“But I sent more as I got older!” I yelled, now hotly offended. This was too damn hard. It didn’t need to be so hard. We were married. Done. Finished. What was there to worry about now?
He folded his arms and leaned back in the chair by the bed. “And what are you now? Nineteen?”
“I’m twenty-eight, jackass!”
“Ah, the language of maturity,” he jeered.
I snapped my mouth shut. Fine. He wanted to begin our first day this way, and I wasn’t going to fight him and give him the satisfaction he obviously enjoyed from our first spat.
I hurled the bedding in his direction, pulling myself out of the sheets and scooting to the far side of the massive bed where I hopped out, throwing open the curtains before storming off to find the bathing chamber.
Rounding the foot of the bed, I stopped short.
Our room was enormous, easily as big as Seraphine and Korven’s entire cottage. The bed I’d slept in remained in the middle of the room at the far wall. But next to it was a dressingscreen wrapped around another, smaller bed that I knew hadn’t been there the night before.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing at the new arrangement.
Killian rose from his chair, picking it up and placing it back at his desk near the door. “That’s your bed.”
I pointed again to the bed I’d slept in last night. “This is my bed.”
He shook his head. “You may insist on sharing a room, but we are not sharing a bed.”
My face fell. “Why not? We don’t have to…you know.”
He leaned against his desk, shoving his hands in his pockets. “No, enlighten me.”
“Youknow,” I lifted my hands in the air and gestured to the bed wildly. “What two people tend to do when they share a bed together.”
His face remained stone as he asked, “Which is?”
In an exasperated groan, I flipped open the lid of my trunk, searching for one of the new gowns I'd commissioned for my days as queen. Yanking it out, I slammed the lid closed with my foot, wincing at the sound of breaking glass. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what fucking is, Killian. You’ve got the word written all over you.”
He watched me open the lid again to search inside for which jar had broken. “Do I now?” he murmured softly, coming nearer.
I began pulling dresses, undergarments, and jars out by the handful, searching for the one that was bound to be leaking over everything, despite Seraphine’s careful packing.
“What are these?” he asked, bent next to me. I jumped, snatching the tiny jar of gel Seraphine had given for intimate moments with my husband. I glanced over the contents and scoffed. “Don’t worry about that one,” I replied sweetly. “Wewon’tbe using it.”
“We?” he replied.
I ignored him, searching in each corner until I found which jar was broken.
Two jars, actually.
“Goddess fucking dammit!” I cursed, carefully pulling out the broken bottom of a salve for small cuts along with the broken jar of thistle nuts I’d stashed away until I could bring more.
The nuts were covered in blue goop and utterly inedible. All I had left of them were in the pockets of my traveling dress from yesterday.
Killian emptied a basket filled with extra blankets and brought it over to my continued cursing as I pulled more glass from the trunk.
“Here. Put the pieces in this and be careful with them.”
I sighed, but did as he said, adding, “Oh, you care suddenly?”
“I don’t want blood and…whatever this is all over my room.”
