Page 40 of The Nightmare Bride
Something he was clearly very familiar with.
I drifted toward Amryssa and sat. The butterfly climbed the stagnant air, no longer interested in its communion now that I’d shown up.
She watched it go. “You intrigue him.”
I frowned. “Who, the butterfly?”
“No. Your husband.”
“What?” I laughed, all hard edges and cold denial. “No, I don’t. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I think perhaps he intrigues you, too.”
“Am, no.” I made a sound of revulsion. “He infuriates me. He’s head-over-heels in love with himself and probably couldn’t act serious at a funeral. And let’s not forget the part where he kidnaps seneschal’s daughters and hurts them.”
“That wasn’t him, though. He never did those things.”
She delivered the statement with such matter-of-fact conviction that I paused. “What? Who told you that?”
“The butterfly.”
The butterfly. I shook my head. Of course.
“It had a message.” Amryssa burrowed against me, her bare skin sticking to mine. “It said I’m not who we think. Nor is the prince. None of us, none of this, is as it seems. That’s what it told me, just now.”
My insides soured. Normally, her ramblings slid right off, but today, the words lodged somewhere south of my heartbeat, in a no-man’s-land I didn’t dare trespass upon.
“It’s all right,” she said. “You’ll see.”
I watched the men work below. I wouldn’t see. I would sign the annulment and rid the world of Kyven, then ship Amryssa off to Hightower. I’d spend the rest of my years imprisoned, and that would be that. A small life, now concluded.
I slid an icy shutter down, sealing whatever feelings I had about that future behind a hard, blank wall.
“The butterfly said another thing, too,” Amryssa continued. “There’s a storm coming. More powerful than any nightmare. And when it arrives, everything will fall apart.”
I flinched.Everything will fall apart.
That much, at least, was probably exactly right.
10.
Over the next three weeks, I trailed Kyven like a would-be jailer, watchful and suspicious.
Not that my vigilance accomplished much. As if in answer to my scrutiny, the prince doubled down on his carefree image—he laughed easily, did everything with gusto, and seized every opportunity to slip me a wink or a half smile. Moreover, ever since our conversation in the cupola, he often studied me as if sizing up a mountain he planned to climb.
Which unsettled me, to say the least. Mostly because I knew that, however well he disguised it, he was likely thinking about pain. Specificallymine, and as the days passed, I almost hoped he would slip. Unleash his sadistic tendencies so I wouldn’t have to endure this farce anymore.
But instead of putting me out of my misery, the insufferable man just...never stopping moving. Breakfast usually involved three separate trips to the sideboard, followed by an exhaustive investigation of the manor’s rooms in search of something “stimulating.” When that inevitably failed, Kyven would pester some poor steward for a job, then spend the afternoon choppingwood, or feeding the hot-water boilers, or wrestling the sheep for shearing. Whatever the task, it usually involved a ridiculous amount of brute strength, and apparently required him to take off his shirt.
Infuriating, egotistical show-off.
Keeping him in my sights exhausted me, and I still had to tend to Amryssa. The only thing making my double duties tolerable was the fact that the prince didn’t chafe at my relentless presence. He only ever complained of boredom, and then he did so with his customary half smile in place.
Nothing else seemed to vex him. Not the heat. Not the scalding tea Miss Quist spilled on his spotless jacquard waistcoat one morning. Apparently, not even the fact that he’d married the wrong woman, whose bed he would share for the next eight weeks.
When I told him he would sleep in my room until the annulment went through, he waggled his brows, a wicked gleam in his eye. But he never so much as touched me. He only sauntered around my chamber each evening, his clothing at a minimum. More than once, he caught me running my eyes over his sculpted torso.
“See something you like?” he said one night.
