Page 208 of The Nightmare Bride
Thankfully, Kyven took the hint and stilled. His fingers curled around my upper arm, firm and hot. Our thighs wove together, and his heart thudded against my ear—serene, steady, slower than mine had ever been. Probably a function of all that wood-chopping and sheep-shearing. In the background, the rain dripped a soft chorus.
Once my head stopped stabbing itself, the overall effect was...nice. And since moving had proved agonizing, I didn’t try again.
Instead, I probed my mind for an accounting of last night. I remembered screams flaying my throat. The dwindling throes of the storm. Kyven—Ky?—unlocking my chains and unfastening my dress, then shedding his clothes and pulling me against him. Murmured reassurances.It’s over, lioness. It’s finished. You’re safe.
And before all that, Oceansgate. Theatre and ale and dancing. A hazy whirl of panic that had ended with the man I’d married saving two lives. Not just mine, but?—
I jerked upright, my head shearing itself in half. “Amryssa!”
Kyven pulled me back down. “Is downstairs at the moment, eating her breakfast.”
“What?” My throat cracked around the word.
“Mmm-hmm. I gave your keychain to Miss Quist. Told her you could use a morning’s reprieve. She was surprisinglyamenable to getting the Lady dressed and fed. Said Miss Amryssa needs to eat more, anyway, and she’d get an entire breakfast in her if it was the last thing she did. If you ask me, that woman is in dire need of someone to force-feed.”
I processed that. “You mean you got up already? Then came back to bed?”
His hand found my hair and smoothed the strands through his fingers. “I didn’t want you waking up alone. You spend all your time looking after the Lady Amryssa, but as far as I can tell, no one ever looks after you.”
A hollow ache opened within me. He might as well have sunk a knife between my ribs and twisted. I heaved myself half upright, propping my forearms on his chest.
Kyven gazed down his cheeks at me, a hint of smile contouring his lips.
And something very strange happened.
It started beneath my ribs—the flutter of a thousand delicate wings taking flight. Warmth lightened my limbs, then sighed outward, sparkling its way down to my fingers and toes.
He looked...different. Maybe it was the aftereffects of the storm, but his beauty moved me on some seismic level I couldn’t explain. The lines of his face came together like a symphony, harmonic and familiar, yet somehow startlingly new.
My gaze flickered away, but then I found myself staring at the half-moon birthmark beneath his collarbone. My fingers quivered with the need to find out whether it felt as smooth as it looked.
Which I resisted. Barely.
“You...” I murmured to his chest, “...saved me.”
Spare words, but backed by a whole wide wall of wonder. Kyven could have done anything last night—hurt me, abandoned me, consigned me to the storm. I’d been as vulnerable as atortoise stranded belly-up, but he’dprotectedme. Again. Me and Amryssa, both.
Goddess. If our positions had been reversed, I would’ve left him.
“Before you make me out to be some kind of savior,” he said, “it cost me nothing to do what I did. I’m only sorry I didn’t manage to guide you through it better.”
My fingers edged toward his birthmark.Hadit cost him nothing? He’d stolen a horse for my sake. Helped break Amryssa’s fall, then brought her to safety. And through it all, I’d tasted his urgency as sharply as my own.
No, that couldn’t have come for free.
At the realization, conviction hardened within me.
Eliana’s letter was wrong. It had to be.
I didn’t know how, or why, only that this man wasn’t the monster she’d described. I would’ve staked my life on it. I had, really, last night. And he’d acquitted himself.
Which didn’t answer even one of my questions. If anything, it only created more. Whowasthis man? What secrets was he keeping, if not those?
“Who are...” I started. “How did you... When the nightmare...”
Goddess. I couldn’t think properly with him stroking my hair like that.
He made a humming sound. “We both have rather a lot to explain, don’t we?”
