Page 64 of The Beast King's Bride

“Ash—”

“May I go now?”

He’s staring at me, eyes flashing with barely contained emotions. “You really don’t want to see me,” he says quietly. “My presence displeases you.”

“It took you a while to realize,” I mutter and something inside of me twists to the point of breaking because that isn’t true. It’s the absolute opposite of the truth. And yet I let it happen. I let him think that I hate his presence, and I can’t imagine that it should bother him. A blow to his manly, kingly pride, perhaps.

He’ll live.

But he has other thoughts on his mind—which I should have expected. Of course he’s not broken over me not wanting him, not caring about seeing him. He brought me here for practical matters and this is what he has been thinking about.

“The ball for the Empress is set for tomorrow night,” he says, his voice going flat and empty. “I have chosen a gown for you to wear. You will appear by my side.”

“Will I?”

“Yes, Ash, you will. Do you have a problem with that?”

I lift my chin. “What if I’d rather not go? Or not stand by your side and wear the gown you chose?”

A mask is falling over his face, freezing his expression. I hadn’t realized he’d been wearing one when I met him, that he’d peeled it off, piece by piece, since I arrived here.

His deep blue eyes go cold, his mouth sets in a flat line. “I won’t let the Empress think that I have given up. I won’t let my people think that.”

“Isn’t it true that it’s all your fault?” I turn stabbing words on him, to deflect. “That you thought you could play a game and win it, underestimating the Empress and in doing so lost?”

“Who told you that?” he says, his voice icy—not empty anymore but angry.

“It doesn’t matter who.”

“You’re right. It doesn’t matter. You will attend the ball. This is not a negotiation. I promised that you can leave when the moon is full, but this is still my palace and you’re still my guest.”

“Guest.” I laugh. “What a joke.”

“Are we back to that?”

“You’re the one forcing me into things. You’re the one who forced a deal on me when I had nothing to bargain with, when you brought me here against my will. Or did you think I’m staying until the moon is full because I like it?”

A terrible emotion goes through his eyes, over his face—there and gone in the flash, but it strikes me like a blow to the stomach, even though I don’t have the time to recognize it. It’s as if below the mask he wears another and another, layers of them, hiding what he thinks, how he feels, and for a moment they all cracked right through and fell open, exposing his heart.

Then he turns away from me to face the flames, the stance I remember from my first night here at the palace, that damn braid so fascinating as it flicks right and left, a pendulum, a black cat’s tail. “Go on, then,” he dismisses me, “return to your studies, human. Jassin will accompany you. After this ball, I won’t require your presence anymore. You will be free to do as you please until the full moon.”

“And then I will go home,” I say.

He nods, still turned away from me, and says nothing else as I take my leave.

There is a scratch on the wall right outside the study—four parallel scratches in fact, as if made by huge claws. I stop in front of it, run my hand over them. One of the monsters must have done it in the night. It’s fresh, I don’t remember it from the last time I was visiting the king.

The guards close the door and take their positions again on either side, their long spears resting on the ground by their feet.

“Did you see what animal did this?” I ask one of them.

He shakes his head. Behind his closed helmet, decorated with swirls of gold that bloom into sprigs of flowers over the sides, he’s invisible and not obliged to look me in the eye.

Unlike the king who seemed to want to bare himself to me, waiting for a nice word from me to tell me more—about himself, about the curse. He had started to open up by the time of the draike in the gardens.

By the time I realized I was falling in love.

It was there, in his gaze, I think as Jassin appears, silent and brooding like before, to lead me back to my room. In his face. In his demands for me to wear a specific gown, to stand by his side, to play a role for the Empress, for his people. A lot he wasn’t saying but that you could read between the lines.

---