I tilted my chin. “I will never love you again.”
The demon king laughed, and the coldness of it splintered shards of ice through me. “Love. Sweet Syera, perhaps you are naive after all. Love. Loyalty. Reason. These words are yours, not mine.”
Carmine leaned in, his focus dropping to my lips for the barest second. “I will relish using your power, enamai. All the more for knowing how you despise me. I would have worked with your love, but your hate—” He inhaled. “—there is something enticing about your hate.”
Carmine was often a ruthless dick, and always a breath away from his cruel side, but not usually to this degree. He was covered in ice. He’dneverspoken to me this way. The vision of me trapped by his side for eternity did make me fear.
Because he could make that happen if I failed.
I replied, “Good to know. Anything else?”
“Your Highness,” spoke a crimson from the open doorway. “You asked to be alerted when?—”
“Silence,” Carmine commanded.
The crimson’s mouth shut with an audible click of his jaw.
“Await me in the throne room.”
The crimson bowed and backed out.
I slid my gaze back to Carmine.Ah. The reason for his mood had nothing to do with me.“Problem at the gates?” I asked in my sweetest voice.
“Less problematic than other things.” He glanced at the crimson, then back to me.
Carmine didn’t want me to portal away. He was stalling my departure. Prior to this he hadn’t appeared to monitor my comings and goings very much, as long as I was back for the royal festivities each night.
“Better go be king then.” I tried.
Carmine’s jaw clenched. He closed the distance between us and lowered his head. The ice was gone. “Do what you must, young mate. Just know, in your iron-encased heart, that the wall you believe to have built high and strong enough is nowhere near as thick as it should be to withstand me. That wall must be much, muchstronger, Syera, or youwillbeg to be mine. You will exist for immortality in torment, and Iwillenjoy your tears.”
My gut twinged at his warning. Because that was what it was: a warning.
I searched his gaze. “I’ll do that.”
He inhaled. “You made a deal with me, Syera.”
I cast my thoughts back and came up empty. “What for?”
“You made a deal to fulfill your role as my mate now that you have returned to the fortress.”
I did? Probably. I hadn’t meant it. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Clearly you believe that a mate-intended and future queen does nothing more than train and sleep and disappear when she likes.”
Ah,another attempt to keep me here.
I smiled. “Why don’t you write down all my princess jobs, Carmine? I’ll get straight to them.”
“Princess?” he breathed. “You are no princess, enamai.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Here I was hoping for a pretty tiara too.”
He cast me a withering look. “Queens wear crowns.”
Oh.
“Fulfill your end of the deal, and I will have no need to stop fulfilling my end,” he said.
