Page 170 of The Nightmare Bride
I closed the door and turned, my lips arranged in a smile. Zephyrine, my face would hurt by the end of this charade. “Usually, but tonight’s different. I’d rather not have her...interrupting anything. If you know what I mean.”
“Ah.” The candlelight thawed his eyes to chilly flames. “Aren’t you full of surprises, then?”
“Oh, just you wait.” My tone played at seduction, but what I really meant was,Your death will be swift and painful.
“I must admit,” he said, throaty, “I’m very much looking forward to this next part. I have been ever since I saw you at breakfast.”
I nearly choked. I betted he had. He’d probably been dreaming about the many ways in which he could hurt me. Tattoo his ownership onto my flesh for everyone to see. Or maybe he didn’t intend to let me live until morning at all.Maybe he planned to add to his list of not-so-little deaths before sunrise.
He ventured closer, and I backed away, my nerves coiling like cranked springs. Was this it? Would I meet the real Kyven now?
But he only plucked at the vine that bound our wrists, his face downturned. His hair slid over his forehead, sending a wave of his scent into my nose.
I stiffened. Thatsmell. I recognized it. Knew it like I knew my own heartbeat.
Saltwater and cypresses and firesmoke.
Kyven yanked at the knots, but I barely felt it, because the vault of my past yawned wide, whisking me back to all those nights spent at the fireside under open stars, when I’d had no roof to call my own. When the wilderness had sprawled around me, endless and lightless and desolate, and I’d felt like the only person in existence. When loneliness had branded its name on my heart, each fall of the sun carving the word deeper.
Sweet Zephyrine, why did Kyven smell like the marsh?
But then I realized—he’d just made a month-long trek from the capital. Half that time would’ve been spent on the lonely Oceansgate road, which cut through miles of wild everglade, where he and his attendants would have bedded down on open ground.
I shook myself, blinking away the thoughts. When I forced my attention downward, Kyven had loosened his half of the vine and gone to work on mine.
“That’s supposed to stay on until sunrise,” I murmured, and couldn’t have said why. I had no desire to honor the traditions, much less stay tied to him for another second. I wanted his evocative scent out of my nostrils, his shining hair far from my sight.
Preferably in a six-foot hole somewhere.
He released the vine and tossed it to the floor. “Don’t worry. I’ve spent a lifetime skirting expectations and have somehow managed to survive. I doubt this will be any different.” His mouth curled in a show of reassurance.
I searched his face. Why was he still talking this way, with such...warmth? He had no reason to maintain the charade any longer, so why not get down to the messy business of trying to hurt me?
Apparently, he had no immediate plans for that, because he turned and sauntered off. “I’ll just go wash up. Be out in a minute.”
The bathroom door closed. Once left to my own devices, I sagged against the wall. Goddess, I needed to get out of this gown. I hadn’t taken a full breath in hours, which was clearly affecting my rationality. I ripped off my marital crown and hunted beneath my skirts for my dagger.
Get this stupid dress off,I told it.
The dagger awoke, and all along my spine, laces popped free. I shoved the gown to the floor, but that only solved half my problem. I pawed at my body next, reinflating my hips and waist, restoring their proper curves.
Oh, thank Zephyrine.
My stomach settled into its rightful place. My lungs lightened with sweet, sweet air. I gasped, then gasped some more, until the fuzzy shadows lining my vision faded.
By the time Kyven emerged from the bathroom, I’d mostly recovered. I lay on the bed in my nightgown, another aching smile pasted to my face. The dagger rested beneath my pillow, awaiting its moment.
Kyven stopped at the foot of the bed. He’d stripped to his shirtsleeves and breeches. His hair had been wetted and combed back, freeing the planes of his face to glint in the candlelight.
I stared. My pulse throbbed in my throat, so thick and forceful I lost my breath all over again. Maybe because it finally sank in that I’d married this man, or maybe because, without all that wedding finery, I could trace my new husband’s body right through his clothes. Broad shoulders tapered to a rangy waist while muscle cabled his arms and thighs. Despite his middling height, he radiated strength, but it was the hardened, hungry kind, the sort earned by days of hard labor that ended with too little on the table. Where he’d looked so refined in his formalwear, now the low light revealed a wild, starving edge. Prince or not, he looked nothing like a man who lounged around in gentleman’s clubs and made polite noises over fine china.
Was this his predator’s hunger shining through, then? Did the perverse appetites boiling inside him carve his body to hardness? Strip away the excesses of princehood?
“That bathroom has more mirrors than a carnival house,” he said, breaking the grip of my thoughts. “I was beginning to think I’d never find my way out.”
A grunt escaped me. I hadn’t expectedthat.
But he wasn’t wrong. Before this had been my chamber, it had been Eliana’s, and the woman had apparently required thirty-six different viewing angles when choosing her wardrobe. Upon moving in, I’d left her mirror collection untouched, with the vague intention of finding out what Merron looked like from every perspective when he hoisted me onto the counter and ravished me.
