No one answered when I knocked. I tried the handle and pushed open the door, bracing myself for what was likely to be a difficult conversation, but one with a happy enough outcome.
My eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim lighting. His curtains were drawn, leaving only candlelight to brighten the room. As the door closed behind me, I searched around.
“Nic—”
The sheer curtains around the bed revealed a woman’s silhouette. She straddled my husband, long hair cascading down her bare back. Nicolas’ hands were on her hips, head pressed deep into the mattress and thrown back in the same pleasure he’d denied me for nine weeks.
And their sounds, a hellish cacophony of urgent passions… The woman’s moans had drowned out my entry. I shut my eyes, but no matter how I cupped my ears, her sounds still bled between my fingers. Nicolas’ breathless groans, those faint cracks when she caressed him precisely how and where he liked to be touched— “No,” I breathed. Then I stormed forward and tore open the curtains. Nicolas halted, but the woman remained on top of him and had the audacity to act annoyed. “No! No, you will not take a whore! Not when you will not touch me!”
My voice betrayed the tears I held back. The woman lifted a sheet to cover herself, but was swiftly bucked off as Nicolas sat up, his features drained of color.
“You would dare speak to your king in such a manner?” asked the woman, and Nicolas shot her a wicked look. Then his gaze fell to me.
“Alana—”
“Get her out!” I screamed, turning away. She was prettier than I’d expected, this mistress I’d heard rumors of. Her long, blonde hair fell over perfect, perky breasts, and her lips were painted like mulled wine.
Nicolas obliged me, dismissing the woman. She put on a robe, walking right past me on her way to the door. I smelled him on her in the same way I might smell a perfume wafting by, and I thought of how it would feel to reach out and strangle the wench.
“I’ll see you soon?” she asked.
“Get out,” Nicolas replied.
She seemed hurt. Good.
And then she was gone.
Nicolas watched me from the bed. We were both quiet; I wondered if he was trying to come up with an excuse. There was nothing he could say, though.
I’d go first, then.
“The Royal Physician and your mother are wrong, and you are an idiot.”
Nicolas leaned back, parting his lips.
“We should still be using our shared suite.” I flexed my fingers and balled them back into fists. “You’re a fool if you believe I would carry your child for months, untouched, while you seek comfort elsewhere.”
He had the decency, at least, to avert his gaze.
“I amyoursto want,” I said, remembering Quinn. I almost wished I’d let him into my room that night, if only for Nicolas to walk in as I had just now. “Do not forsake me again.”
It didn’t seem like he had anything to say for himself. I stomped to the door, stopping before touching the handle.
“Touch another whore again, and I will show you exactly the sort of witch your subjects are afraid of.”
Chapter 45
It was unlikelythat I would ever train with swords, but there was something about watching a duel that put me right into the middle of it. The burden on my muscles, the labored breath; Quinn took a swing at Marcy and she parried, and I traveled vicariously between their forms, equally enraptured as the rest of the crowd.
“How unfortunate that it was only my left arm,” Quinn taunted. “Otherwise we might be more even.”
Marcy huffed and unclasped her armor, setting it aside with respectful caution. The crowd reveled at the sight of her in dark underclothes, the fabric hugging muscles in a way no woman’s clothes would dare reveal. “By all means, continue deluding yourself, Lord Navarro. It will make your defeat all the more amusing.”
I wasn’t sure how the duel had begun, and I spent every waking moment with Marcy in my presence. We’d gone for a walk, the two of them exchanged a look behind my back, and the next thing I knew, Marcy was in that fenced-off ring, traipsing through mud like a little boy.
Without warning, my stomach popped. At least, that was the best way I could describe it. It was as if a tendon in my muscles remembered that it belonged someplace else and snapped back into place, brought about by absolutely nothing and always a startle. I flinched, putting a hand on the spot, but recovered before any pitiful gazes could land on me.
“—brokered a trade with Baselia,” I overheard Marquis Trefor say. “We should have a steady supply of wheat in exchange for our ironworks.”
