Page 199 of The Nightmare Bride
Another gulp of ale. Another breath. “I don’t remember much else, because I kept losing consciousness. It’sjust...flashes. Cut-up bits of memory. But I remember the surgeon opening my vein and hooking some kind of tube from Amryssa’s arm to mine. Supposedly there wasn’t much chance of it working. Something about one person’s blood not usually agreeing with another’s. But in our case, it did. The physician sewed up my leg, and Amryssa gave me so much blood that she passed out, and afterward, she needed weeks to recover. Olivian was so pissed. But here I am. Still alive, because of her. Because she refused to turn her back on me, even though she could have. Even though she probably should have.”
Kyven’s throat bobbed, as if he were fishing for his next words somewhere deep within. “But she asked something of you in return, did she not? For you to become her keymistress?”
“No, no.” Denial pitched my words low. “That was a gift, too. The storms had just started, and her mother had just died. Back then, the nightmares weren’t as bad as what we get now, but they could still kill, and Amryssa needed someone to look after her. So she gave me a choice. A chance to get out of the swamp. The truth is, I haven’t done a thing to deserve it. If it weren’t for her charity, I’d still be out in the marsh. Alone.”
Kyven let go of the apple, letting the slices unfurl like petals. He raised his eyes.
My head seemed to come unstuck from my body. For all the many looks he’d given me, none had laid me bare the way this one did. It was like he was looking through me.Intome.
“You’re very much...not what I expected, when we met,” he said. “I’ve known that for weeks now, but I don’t think I realized the full extent until this moment.”
My throat tightened. I had no answer for that.
“Perhaps the Lady Amryssa isn’t, either. Perhaps...I’ve underestimated her.”
“You wouldn’t be the first.” I fiddled with my mug, if only to give myself something to do. “Everyone treats her like she’smade of eggshells. Even me, to be honest. But her kindness is...fierce. She might seem soft on the outside, but inside, she’s strong. Strong enough to weather any bullshit life throws at her.”
“Bullshit?” Kyven’s trademark smile tickled to life. “My poor, virgin ears.”
“Sorry,” I said, not really thinking. Mostly, I was just profoundly, grotesquely relieved to have moved on to another subject.
“Are you?”
I considered. “No. I’m absolutely fucking not.”
His smile stretched. “Ah, well. In truth, my ears aren’t any more virginal than the rest of me.”
At that, a memory arose—a deft tongue, tracing shivering lines against my throat. No, he wasn’t virginal in the slightest. That I knew.
A fiery arrow glided down my spine. Gods, would my mind never cease to revisit that place? Whenever Kyven got too close, tooattentive, my thoughts went careening downhill.
I relived our wedding night way more often than I wanted to.
To distract myself, I plucked an orange from the fruit plate and dug my nails into the peel. When I looked up again, Kyven’s eyes glittered—whether because he’d divined the direction of my musings or drawn that story out of me, I couldn’t say. But he looked like a man who’d labored over a jigsaw puzzle for weeks, then found the last piece lodged beneath the carpet.
“I want you to call me Ky,” he said, apropos of nothing.
Itchiness tightened my skin, a warning prickle, like I’d looked around and realized I’d strayed too close to an open flame. Next thing I knew, it would burn me, and I’d have no one to blame but myself. “I’m not doing that.”
“Why not? Afraid you’ll like it?”
“No.” The word was hardly more than a scoff. “Nicknames are just way too...familiar.”
“Well, they do say familiarity breeds contempt. So, seeing as how you’re so intent on hating me, perhaps you ought to let your guard down a little. It might help your cause.”
My head swam with the circularity of his argument. I had no idea how he came up with things like that on the fly. “What? That doesn’t even make sense.”
“It makes perfect sense.”
“It doesn’t. And you’re infuriating for even saying it.”
“You like that I infuriate you.”
“I don’t.”
“Keep telling yourself that. Perhaps you’ll even believe it, someday. Because I certainly don’t.” He grinned and popped an apple slice into his mouth. I hadn’t known a person could chewsmugly, but he managed.
Ugh.
