Page 112 of Thorn Season
He laughed softly. “Never you.”
I followed him into the concave room. It was unfurnished, with crumbling stones, cracked flooring, and a heavy sheet covering one portion of the wall. Dust whirled in the cool air, furring my tongue with each inhale.
“You’ve been lying to me,” Erik murmured. My specter jolted, but he continued evenly, “You consider my proposal with a fine lady’s restraint, but I see your eagerness. I see you aching for the power you know you deserve... and I’m the only person in this world who can quell the ache.”
A sense of foreboding crept over me as he drifted toward the sheet. He clenched up a handful. Then he whooshed it down.
Dust billowed and fogged the room, gritting my eyes. I was clearing my throat from the musty stench when the gray haze parted.
And I locked eyes with my own painted stare.
The artist had depicted me with a generous hand—reddening my lips, darkening my lashes, setting my cheekbones aglow. A crystal bodice dived knifelike down my chest—a severe rendering of my usual style—and my hair was twined back, lone tendrils curling toward my collarbone.
Mounted on my head was the two-tined crown, encrusted with diamonds and sapphires.
The dual spikes shot skyward and the center plunged low against my brow, mimicking my neckline and evoking the helmeted look of a warrior. I looked glorious and forbidding—iced with jewels and bronzed with fire.
I looked more powerful than I’d ever felt in reality.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered, alarm now swelling inside me.
Because only blood-royals wore the two-tined crown. Never consorts. Neverme.
Erik’s profile cut a sharp shadow across the portrait, like a cloud blotting the sun. “Immense power cannot be held by a single entity. The weight must be split—balanced between two—or else it can crush its bearer.” He trailed reverent fingers over the crown’s painted tines, the movement forming a long V. “It’s why my predecessors left mediocre legacies, remembered for their failures and their tragedies, their vanities and vengeances. They failed to consider that even our deities must rule in pairs. But I’ve always known that to have more—tobemore—I must choose for myself a worthy partner.”
His fingers stilled on the brow of my portrait. His eyes glimmered across my painted lips. “I ache, just as you do,” he said quietly. “For gods cannot stand alone.”
Then he turned to me, taking my gloved hands, standing so close that my short breaths fogged the silver buttons of his jacket.
“You would not be my consort,” he said tenderly. “You would be my finest conquest. I would make you a queen.”
My specter heaved; I clenched my muscles to hold it down. This was more than I’d ever expected from him—more than I’dwanted—and my body was responding with the panic of an animal who’d just had a cage dropped over them.
But I forced myself to ask, breathless, “I’d rule by your side? As your equal?”
“You’d be my equal in all things if you would let me make you mine.”
Mine.The word rang hollow in my ears.
“And you’d be mine?” I asked.
“Until my dying day.”
My specter pulsed faster, straining now. This little room was too stagnant, too suffocating. I pulled away and stumbled for the door.
The gallery’s perfumed air hit me, and I gasped in a lungful.
Erik followed, obscenely calm. The arch clicked back into the wall behind him. “Most women wouldn’t run from a declaration like that.”
“Why not Lady Perla or the others?” I asked, almost accusingly. “You could take your pick.”
Erik slunk closer. He grasped my chin and turned my head toward his portrait. “It doesn’t feel like me, you said.” He whipped my face back toward him. “You’re the only one of them who sees me. The only one who ever could.”
He was right. I knew the monster he was because I’d witnessed it for myself.
My eyes flicked to the portrait again, and I gulped, imagining my own beside it. And suddenly, I knew I wouldn’t have feared that crowned image of me—I might have even embraced it—if not for what it implied. That Erik’s intentions weren’t built on temporary attraction. That he’d found within me something he truly desired.
And he would relinquish half his crown—half hispower—if I would let him take it.
