Page 89 of To Wake a Kingdom

“You have to try.” I glanced at Erick’s back.“He will kill you, and if that happens, then I really won’t be able to go on. If you can find a way to be happy, that will be enough for me. I can endure anything if you are happy.”

“Thorne,” he breathed, and the sound ground what was left of my heart into nothing but fine powder. It sifted through the cracks in the floor to be lost to the wind forever.

Erick finished with his discussion, and Ronan pulled his hand away.

“Well, then,” Erick said, resuming his seat and wringing his hands. “You’ll be thrilled to know, little brother, Markus Hammond is going to help fund our campaign against Galin. We’ll get our hands on those gold mines after all.”

My eyes widened at his calculating heartlessness. First, he’d dumped Esme, and now planned to wage war against them?

“You’ll need to prepare the army to leave in one week. I imagine this will be a long and bloody battle.” He dropped a stern look on both of us. “It should keep you away from Estria for quite some time. I can’t have you two making a cuckold of me, can I?”

Erick was as cunning as a freshly honed blade, more so than I’d given him credit for. He would get both his mines and Ronan out of the way with one tidy maneuver. It was one crippling defeat after another.

“I’m tired,” I said. “I’d like to be taken to my—our—room.” I shuddered at the final act yet to come of this farce, but I couldn’t look at Ronan. Any longer, and I would throw myself on him and cling to him and never let go.

“I will join you soon,” Erick said.

I stood and offered him a shallow curtsy.“I will see you shortly, husband.” I tried out the unwelcome word. It felt thick and sour in my mouth, like curdled milk.

When I arrived at Erick’s bedchamber, Luella and Marie were already waiting. They eased me from my heavy gown, replacing it with a thin, white nightgown and a navy robe. Deft fingers smoothed out my braids, and Marie brushed my hair.

Before bidding me goodnight, they both eyed me with understanding—I was a queen and they were servants, but the language of a woman forced to bed a man was a universal one.

The room was twice the size of mine, decorated in jewel tones of blue, red, and violet. Every surface gleamed with marble, while the fabrics were rich and sumptuous.

Seated on the edge of the king’s enormous bed, my feet dangled off the floor.Maybe I could pretend I was sleeping when he arrived, but I already knew this would be his final insult to Ronan. He would leave nothing open to interpretation or division, and for that, we must consummate our marriage.

Erick entered the room, slithering in like an overconfident weasel. I focused on my feet as his attendant helped him undress and redress into his nightclothes. I was still staring at my toes when the bed settled as Erick sat next to me. The door closed firmly, locking me in, the sound like the snap of the reaper’s fingers.

“Can I assume you are no maid, and my little brother has already sullied you?” His tone was dry. Finally looking up, I gave him a sharp look, and he scoffed.“Oh, I hardly care,wife. In fact, that makes things easier. I really don’t have the patience to coax a trembling virgin into bed tonight. It’s so utterly tedious.” He reached out and picked up a lock of my hair, twisting it in his fingers. A pungent churn spun in my gut. “Youarerather striking, aren’t you? I can see what my brother finds so intoxicating about you. It’s a shame you have to talk so much. You’d be much more beautiful if you remained as silent as you were today.”

I wanted to rip out his throat. I wanted to tear out his heart and feed it to him. I wanted to smash his face into tiny shards of bones and blood and snot and brains.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that. Get over it, myqueen. It’s going to be a long and odious life, otherwise.”

Still holding my hair in his fingers, he slid closer. As he placed a hand on my leg, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I wasn’t frightened, only broken. My soul had already departed my body, and I wouldn’t feel a thing.

Erick slid my nightgown up my thighs, an eager look in his eyes. Whether that excitement was for the use of my body or simply the offence to his brother, I couldn’t be sure.

“Lie back,” he ordered, standing and shucking his robe. A sharp vibration of memory shuddered through me as I thought of Ronan on a very different night, just weeks ago, in a very different life.

Shifting to the middle of the bed, I did as I’d been told, seeing myself as if floating from above. I was not here. My mind crawled into itself, hiding from the shadows that enveloped me. Erick clamored onto the bed, straddling me, and I willed myself to relax. To enter some other place on a distant plane of awareness. I would have to keep doing this. We would need to produce an heir. Probably more than one. To get through this, I’d build up an arsenal of weapons crafted for my survival.

I tried not to think of Ronan. Of how little time we’d had together before we’d been torn apart. I missed him so much that it felt like a rusty dagger piercing my heart.

Erick’s breath washed over my skin, clammy and warm. He looked so much like his father that I was transported to yet another day in yet another life. A day when I awoke, after a hundred years, to a man with murderous rage in his eyes. Panic broke out over my skin like a rash.

I was wrong. I couldn’t do this.

But it was happening anyway. Erick pushed my nightgown past my waist, and I felt the unwelcome sear of his manhood hard against my stomach. I squeezed my eyes shut as tears painted my cheeks in watercolors of endless resentment.

My fists were clenched into the bedspread, and spots darkened my vision as I pressed my cheek to the sheets, trying to look away. My chest drew so tight I couldn’t breathe.

But then, with a breathy whoosh of confusion, Erick flew off me.

A crack shattered the air as he crashed into the wall. His body hung suspended, pinned for a moment as if even gravity had been caught off guard. As he slid to the ground, a thick trail of blood followed him to where he collapsed, his head drooping forward, his chin resting on his chest. A gaping wound in the back of his head oozed blood and brains and viscera.

Too shocked to move, I blinked once, twice, three times, and then let out a bloodcurdling scream.

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