Hatred built in me, a towering wave. “Too late for that.”
Carmine’s lips curved under his cold, hard gaze. “Perhaps I am not the broken one. You have failed your trial, future queen. I will not release your twin.”
At this point, not going through with the intention ceremony suited me just fine. Tempest had escaped, and without the next ritual, I would still be able to visit Adeuto. And Owu too. “Suit yourself.”
“So casual about your twin’s misery.” He tilted his head.
I stood. “My twin can withstand anything you throw at her, Carmine. That’s what I know. So if you no longer want to continue the mating ritual, then I have underestimated how much you wish for that.”
He smirked. “Our intention ceremony will continue. Or I will kill your twin.”
Revulsion twisted my face. Yesterday he’d said that I was the only thing that made sense in his existence. Nowthis?“You turn from playing nice to playing power so easily, Carmine.”
He rose beside me and leaned his face closer. “You bring out the worst in me. But one day, you will cease to challenge me, and then you will discover that I can play nicely indeed.”
I should have backed down from the start, but it was too late for that, so I curtsied, then murmured, “My humblest apologies, most powerful and cunning king.” I straightened and shouted in his face, “Fuck you!”
Silence chased all noise from the hall.
Not my best choice.
Snarls ripped from Carmine’s chest. His power exploded around me, and I was jerked forward as heavy chains snapped around my wrists.
He strode from the hall, and it became clear thatheheld the other end of the chain. I was jerked forward and stumbled into a jog to keep up.
Gratia’s shocked gaze landed on me.
I winked, because I was completely and utterly furious beyond reason, and winking was all I had left as a woman in chains. I called to her, “Be reassured that at least your mating won’t be like this.”
She nodded, seeming to genuinelyfeelreassurance at my words.
Carmine yanked on the chains, and I bit back on a yelp, forced into a quicker jog.
Once we were in his personal quarters, Carmine whirled on me and unleashed an explosion of power my way. His crimson smoke couldn’t hurt me, but it disintegrated everything else.
I screamed in rage and funneled my power back at him. And while my smoke didn’t hurt him, either, therestof the lounge behind Carmine was disintegrated.
“Why won’t you submit?” he roared at me.
When he charged forward, the end of the chain dropped, and he pounded his hands on the ruins of stone either side of my head. The remnants of the wall fell away, and then nothing was left of the room.
He pushed my chin high and crushed his lips to mine.
No.I yanked the other end of the chain to me and whipped it across his face. A slash of crimson appeared over his cheek, and Carmine remained partly turned, shoulders heaving as blood dripped from the wound between two scales.
“No,” I said in a shaking voice.
He slowly looked back, and there was no reason left in him. Only ice. Only the Carmine I hated.
“Not yet,” he said to himself. “She will crumble in the end.”
My rage started to fall into the fear I should have felt from the start.
Carmine trailed his finger over my shoulder and up my neck. “She will crumble.”
Lust rose to meet his fingertips, and I gritted my teeth against the surge.
“Continue to test the limits of my power, and you will find that your leash grows shorter and shorter until the nearness of me that revolts you is all that remains.”
