Page 232 of The Nightmare Bride
“Ah,” he said, at length. “There you are.”
I frowned. His voice had changed. I hardly even recognized it, full of tenderness as it was.
“You’re so beautiful. I always forget how much.” He laughed—a strange, crooked sound, and... Goddess, he’d gone mad. Well and truly mad.
What followed was the most bizarre conversation I’d ever been privy to. Olivian seemed to fracture into two people, first praising his wife, then scolding her. He professed his love in one moment, and in the next, railed at the Lady for asking him to release Amryssa into the marsh.
“You can’t have her,” he shouted. “I won’t hear of it, so you might as well stop asking. Our daughter’s place is here, now. You made that choice. We both did.”
Now. The word caught in my mind and held. What did that mean? Had Amryssa’s place been somewhere else, once?
Olivian went on, spewing love and fury, the line between the two growing increasingly blurred. The whole time, Kyven and I stayed still as stones.
At last, the invective wound down. When Olivian finally stood, he did it in stages, as if he’d aged a decade in the last twenty minutes.
“I love you,” he told the empty room. “And hate you. And gods among us, how I wish you hadn’t left me.”
His footsteps receded. Hinges creaked. The key clinked in the door.
I blew out a mile-long breath. The seneschal had locked us in, but Kyven could always use the picks from this side. Olivian had also left a lamp burning, but considering what I’d just heard, Idoubted he was in a frame of mind to realize, much less return to rectify his mistake.
“You can get off me now,” I said.
Kyven didn’t budge. He just lay atop me, much as he had on our wedding night.
“I could.” His half smile resurfaced. “But ‘can’ and ‘want to’ are two vastly different things.”
I studied him. Gods, I was already getting annoyed again. Mostly because if I didn’t, I’d get unreasonably turned on by the press of his hips against mine. “Okay. Iwantyou to get off. How’s that?”
“How badly?” he crooned.
I narrowed my eyes.
“As badly as you wanted to stop me from going out there?” he continued. “As badly as you wanted to keep the seneschal from killing me? Because, for someone who professes to hate me, you seemed awfully invested in my survival.”
I considered that, then reached up to cradle his stubbled cheeks. “The only reason I wanted to keep Olivian from killing you,” I said sweetly, “was so I could do it myself.”
He blinked, then broke into a smile. “Gods, lioness. You’re a terrible liar. The absolute worst.”
I was. I really was. And we both knew it, but that didn’t stop me from bucking hard enough to dislodge him. He rolled aside with a sound that was half chuckle, half groan.
“Whatever,” I said, “I don’t?—”
I froze. And stared at the underside of the mattress, at the spot I hadn’t yet glimpsed, what with Kyven looming over me that whole time.
“What?” he said. “Don’t tell me you miss me already?”
“No, you insufferable prince. I just... Just...” I jabbed a finger upward, indicating the leatherbound book wedged between the slats. Thebrownleatherbound book. “Look.”
Kyven rolled onto his back and followed my finger. A long silence spun by.
“Well,” he said. “Would you look at that?”
21.
Somehow, I was certain of what we’d found before we even opened it. The diary had a sheen, a well-worn patina that buzzed against my fingertips.
The moment Kyven locked us into my bedroom, I cracked the book’s cover. Sure enough, the first page bore a portrait. Of Olivian. Younger and beardless, without any of the anger now cemented into his features. The artist had rendered him mid-laugh, eyes glinting.
