The way she had threaded her fingers through his hair.
The way she had clung to him like a woman on the verge of drowning.
Clever Sera. Beautiful Sera. Infuriating Sera.
She burned you, he reminded himself, disgusted with his own ridiculousness. Oh no, he wouldn’t be forgetting that any time soon. She had burned him like a holy man wanting to read his soul.
If only Beck were still alive and here to see him now, his old friend would get a good laugh out of his current state. Aldric Hargrave, driven mad by a woman. A strange woman. A potentially dangerous woman.
A bitter taste filled his mouth at the thought. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had felt this way. Never? Or maybe once before, in his early twenties.
There had been that one girl…oh, what had been her name? Leni? Lina?
Beck would have known. But then again, Beck had always been the skirt chaser out of the two of them. Ever since they were boys—
A sudden knock at the door lured a snarl to his throat. It was probably Calix, coming to check on him. Or maybe Kyn wanting to make sure he hadn’t busted the stitches in his left thigh after all the exertion.
Either way, he wasn’t in the mood.
“What do you want?” he shouted, splashing another handful of water onto his face.
The door clicked open. Quiet steps padded into the room, accompanied by the swish of fabric. He froze, his chest clenching, his pulse racing.
He didn’t have to look to know who it was.
A Kunishi swear escaped from him before he could bite it back. Something rude, not fit for a lady’s ears. “Sera,” he growled in the common tongue, scrambling for a towel. He used it to mask the right side of his face and the tangle of scar tissue that existed where his eye once had while he hunted for his leather eyepatch.
He heard her exchange some quiet words with her guards before shutting the door behind her. Back to her prim and proper self, his kirei coolly declared, “I would prefer you call me ‘Your Majesty,’ you know.”
He grimaced and ripped open the top drawer of the dresser. “Too many syllables.”
Colder still, she suggested, “Seraphina, then.”
He snorted. “That’s the same amount of syllables.”
There it was. His blasted eyepatch.
Yanking it free, he chanced a glance over his left shoulder, meeting his wife’s gaze for a split second. Something tight pinched at the corners of her eyes. Her cheeks were flushed. She looked displeased.
But she so often did where he was concerned.
“What have I done wrong this time?” he sighed, exchanging the towel for the eyepatch. Ironically, now that he was back in herpresence, his fingers stopped shaking; it didn’t take long for him to tie the patch into place.
Silence was his only answer.
It wasn’t until he turned around to face her properly that she crossed her arms over her chest and deigned to murmur, “You left without me, even though I told you we still had to retire before we could go our separate ways.”
Understanding dawned as his gaze ticked between his kirei in all her obvious discomfort and the closed door. Slowly, he looked back to her and raised both his eyebrows.
Beneath the weight of his stare, she looked away first.
His mouth ran dry. “All for the sake of appearances, no doubt,” he hedged, trying to make sense of the situation rather than jumping to conclusions.
She soon confirmed his suspicions. “Of course.” Shifting her weight from foot to foot, she lifted her chin and added with a healthy dose of all her usual, obnoxious self-confidence, “I thought I would just linger for five to ten minutes before returning to the reception. That should be long enough, surely.”
Five to ten minutes.
He didn’t know whether to be amused or offended.
