Just one good thing.
My next inhale is stopped short when King Dolian’s lips invade mine, and I feel myself drowning as I press my fingers into his shoulders. I usher in an icy numbness to combat the knowledge of his tongue pressing at the seam of my mouth, of the way his hands roam over my body. Deeper and deeper I sink until I’m chilled to the bone, the last embers of the fire within me plunged into darkness.
I don’t know how much time passes, only that, when he’s done, he agrees to give Eve the time off. Helping me stand, he kisses my cheek before sauntering out of the room, passing Xander as he does.
“Make sure she heals at least half a battalion today. We’ve had a bit of a late start.”
Xander nods, his eyes going to me as soon as the king is out of sight. “Rhea—”
“I’m fine.”
“That’s not the godsdamn truth, and you know it.” My eyes shut as he blocks the doorway, keeping me trapped in this room. “I’m going to keep asking every single day until you say yes. Let me take you to meet the resistance. We’reso closeto finalizing a plan to get you out, Rhea. To freeing you.”
I pry my eyes open again, exhaustion a lingering companion. “Don’t you realize how dangerous that is? That if the king atallsuspected you, suspected me of havinganythingto do with you, he could simply command that I tell him? You want your whole operation put at risk like that?” His stare is hard, that cold exterior he prefers unwavering. And I just… I don’t have it in me to argue anymore. “Perhaps it’s time that you come to accept what I have. There is nothing to be done.”
His head jerks back in shock, but I don’t wait for him to respond before I’m pushing past him. When I’m done healing the men of the guard, it’s Brisk and not Xander who returns me to my room, my steps wobbling to the point that I have to lean against the wall for most of the walk back.
Changed and unable to sleep, my thumb prods at the pearl on my ring finger, spinning it around my finger over and over again. Time is lost as I think of nothing, of no one, until knocks on my door pull me from the bed.
“Lady Nele, it’s Brisk,” the guard shouts through the door when I don’t immediately answer. Upon hearing his voice, I put on a robe and open the door. His brow is creased with worry, his lips drawn down at the corners.
“What is it?”
“King Dolian has demanded that you be brought to his rooms.”
Two of the king’s Trusted are waiting outside his chambers when Brisk and I arrive, and the larger of the two glares down at me as he opens the door and gestures for me to enter.
The scent of the king’s cologne coats the room, and I lay a hand over my stomach as if that will stop the nausea from churning up my throat. When I’m a few steps past the door, it shuts behind me, and I’m plunged fully into the king’s private spacealone. My eyes pass over the bookshelves that line the walls and the armchairs gathered around a table as the room flashes bright, lightning from a storm rolling in shining in through a large window to my right. I startle at the thunder that follows, my breaths quickening at the anxiousness that roils through me.
The day I had been forced to kill Sterling and his wife, the king had said he was done waiting to have me in his bed. I had been so ravaged by the guilt that coated me as thickly as my victims’ blood that I hadn’t given his words a second thought. But being here now, I wonder if he’s finally making good on the threat.
It’s between the flashes of lightning and rumbles of thunder that I hear a whimper. Straining my ears, I listen for it again, another muffled sound traveling down the hall that feeds into this room. My breath catches in my throat at the unmistakably female sound, and it draws me forward and down the hall lit by flame gems, bringing me to an open doorway where the foot of a bed comes into view.
The wooden footboard is carved with a swirling pattern, the shiny red fabric of the bed sheets bunching towards the bed’s center. I force myself to move closer, just as a malegruntechoes out. The next step I take brings the rest of the bed into view, and my lips part at the sight before me.
The king stands with his back to me, his deep blue shirt untucked. The ends of his belt slap against his thighs as hemoves rhythmically in an undeniable motion, his hands gripping the upper arms of a woman. She’s completely bare, her hair unbound and draped over her back and shoulders, shielding her face from view. Heat rises up my neck, and I cover my mouth to stop the horrified sound that threatens to slip out when my eyes catch the clothing dotting the floor. A gray dress lays in a perfect pile, as if its owner slipped it down her body and simply stepped out of it. Next to it is a white apron, its straps tangled, and a pair of black flats.
“You are mine,” King Dolian growls, releasing one of the woman’s arms to fist the strands of her blonde hair, tugging roughly until her neck is arched at an uncomfortable angle. “You havealwaysbeen mine.” He thrusts his hips forward harshly, and the woman cries out, her hands trying—and failing—to find some sort of leverage.
“Yes, My King,” she says, and it’s the broken tone of her voice that propels me the rest of the way forward, my hands already held out in front of me.
“Stop!” My shriek startles the king, but his glazed eyes hold mine as his fingers tighten their hold on the maid.
“Darling,” he drawls, his cheeks flushed. “What perfect timing.” A deep groan from him threatens to make me collapse where I stand, but I force myself to stay focused, my mind scrambling to find something to say that will get him to stop. He yanks the maid’s hair until she’s forced to turn her head, my gaze clashing with hers. Time halts, suspending between us with shock as I stare into her soft blue eyes.
“Eve?” I whisper.
Chapter Ninety-Four: Rhea
“Icanexplain.”Herthroat works with a rough swallow, the movement exaggerated by the king’s tight hold on her hair.
“Yes,” he says, leaning over her naked body to grip her chin between his thumb and fingers. “Explain to my dear fiancéeexactlywhat is going on here. Whathasbeen going on since before she returned to me.”
Tears trail down Eve’s cheeks, her bottom lip quivering. But words fail her as her chest and neck blush, her quiet sobs making her shoulders rise and fall. Betrayal is a bitter taste on my tonguefor all of a few seconds before my rationality takes hold. I didn’t need to be privy to this entire moment to know that Eve has no love for the king. To know that her avoidance whenever I asked what jobs the king was forcing her to do in the evenings wasn’t because she was lying to me for the sake of lying but because she wasashamed. I recognize the emotion on her face as if it were my own.
Eve’s heart is a soft one—one that bleeds for her sister back home. For Edwin, the man she loves but now, I realize with a sickening jolt, feels she is undeserving of.
“Too afraid to speak?” he says, roughly releasing Eve and forcing her face back to the bed. He rights himself, his head turning towards me. “Let me tell the tale, then.” He jerks his hips forward so harshly that the entire bed shakes. Heat burns me from within, my anger pushing me another step forward before magic halts me. My fingers press in at my temples, the sound of a roaring wave deafening as my murderous intentions activate the king’s command that I not hurt him. Eve cries out, stretching her arms out in front of her as her fingers claw at the comforter. “You see, when you left, Rhea, you unleashed a monster in your absence. Getting you back was all I could think about—all I could focus on. And when Eve was brought to my rooms by Simon as a way todistractme… Well, her likeness to you was hard to ignore.”
