Colum was brilliant and either shy or reserved—she wasn’t sure which—and as a result seemed standoffish. He and Nikolett would have never been true husband and wife. Not just because Colum was the archivist, a position that required him to stay in Dublin, while Nikolett was the admiral of Hungary and based in Budapest.
Colum was Eric’s brother, by choice if not by blood.
A masculine hand appeared behind Colum, grabbed his collar, and yanked him back inside.
The door snapped shut.
Nikolett refused to smile. She wouldn’t say she knew Colum well, but she knew what he meant to Eric, and as a result had a soft spot for him—a distinctsisterlyfeeling.
Given that she’d not only had sex with Eric but loved him, marrying and sleeping with his brother was abhorrent to her.
She’d accused Eric of being very aware of that fact, and arranging her trinity marriage to his brother and a German knight she’d never met, specifically because their jobs, and the ick factor, would have kept her marriage from being anything more than a political farce.
She had a new plan. A plan that admittedly made her feel slightly ill, but a plan.
Step one, get the fuck out of this castle.
Nikolett took another step. “I’m leaving.”
“The hell you are.” Eric didn’t move, but he was no longer calm. Good. Pissed-off Eric made mistakes.
Nikolett knew they had an audience. Iacob, one of her people, was standing on the stairs, barely visible from where she was in the wide hallway. The way he kept glancing back and down told her there was someone else on the stairs too.
No doubt one of the Spartan Guard, who lived here and protected the fleet admiral. The Spartan Guard had to be single, meaning an arranged marriage could be used to force them to retire and return to their territory.
Eric had done it to Mateo, the former head of the guard.
It was hearing Mateo’s story that had first planted the idea that the fleet admiral could use an arranged marriage to isolate or remove people he wanted contained. It wasn’t until a year ago that she finally let herself voice her fear that Eric would do that to her.
She’d done more than voice her fear.
She’d first accused Eric of planning to marry her off, then taunted him by asking him how he’d feel when she was fucking her new spouses.
It had nearly broken her when his expression told her she was right. Eric would, eventually, use his power as the fleet admiral to force her to marry.
Because Eric needed her to be off-limits.
Since neither of them had any noticeable self-control when they were together, she even understood why Eric had decided to use her marriage to forcibly separate them from one another rather than simply ending the relationship. If she could have walked away from him, she would have. A million times she’d faced him, ready to do battle, but instead ended up in his arms.
She didn’t blame him for realizing they would probably never have the self-control or sense of self-preservation needed to stop on their own. She did blame him for being too much of a coward to face the demons of his past and love her.
Nikolett took another step, aware that she was running out of time because her leg was starting to throb inside the cast. She needed to sit down and elevate it. It wasn’t just a bone break—she also had some pretty severe tissue and muscle damage from the bear trap that was the cause of this particular injury.
“Nikolett, go back to bed. You’ll hurt yourself.”
“I don’t need to hurt myself.” She smiled. “You do a perfectly good job hurting me without my help.”
Someone out of sight on the stairs made a choking noise.
Eric shoved his hands in his hair, gripping it in his fists.
Her progress was slow, but now that she was moving, she wasn’t going to stop—moving or talking.
“You have no right to keep me here.”
Crutches, step.
“There’s no rule or even precedent to allow the fleet admiral to keep a territory admiral away from their territory.”
