Her brows knitted. “You saw me… You were watching me?”
He pushed onto his elbows, feeling the blade of the dagger break skin, the shallow cut welling with blood. “For nearly as long as you’ve been watching me, tiny fiend.”
Then she was the one cursing as he rolled, her now underneath him. With one hand, he pinned her arm above her head, the dagger gripped in her fist. His other hand gripped her hip, keeping her from trying to buck him off, mainly because he knew she didn’t realize what kind of friction that would create. Then again, maybe he should let her try to find out because there was no way she couldn’t feel his cock pressing against her.
“How do you know I was watching you?” she ground out.
“I didn’t always know it was you,” he admitted, aware that she was too still and likely planning to distract him with questions until she could gain the upper hand once more. “I can sense others’ power. The strength of it. I can tell if someone’s power levels are low or full because of that gift. For months, I felt a strong power, but it was fleeting. Flickering in and out. The day you showed up at the battle with the phantoms was the day I realized it had been you the entire time.”
“So you trapped me? Forced me into a bargain, and then chained me to you with a necklace? Knowing it would cut me off from some of my power? Knowing what that does to a person to not have access to a part of themselves?”
There was a crack in her last words, a tortured and unbearable agony ringing in them.
“I did what I had to,” he said simply. “I told you to believe the rumors, Kailia. I told you all of them were true.”
She stared up at him, her gaze bouncing around his face as if searching for something. Whatever it was, she wouldn’t find it. He had no regrets about what he’d done.
Finally, she said, “So none of it was real? You told me it had to be real, and none of it was? It was all simply a means to an end?”
“Why would you think this isn’t real? I told you this marriage was for life, wife,” he replied, tugging on his soaking tunic to show her the moon Mark on his chest just beginning to appear with the setting sun. “A Lunar Marriage binds us together in this life and all the ones after.”
Her words were bitter, that hardness back in her gaze when she said, “Then it shall be my mission to hunt you down in every life and make you regret ever binding yourself to me.”
Releasing her hip, he fingered the crystal at her throat again. “It shouldn’t be too hard to find me, tiny fiend. No hunting necessary.”
A cry of frustrated fury escaped her, and while he’d been prepared for her to try to maneuver out from under him, he hadn’t been prepared for her to use her power. For her smoke to gather in his face, making his eyes and lungs burn as something solid, but somehow not at the same time, hit him square in the chest.
He managed to keep a hold of her wrist, keeping that dagger far from sinking into his flesh once again as they rolled in the sand, but of course, she had another one. This one hadn’t been strapped to her thigh but pulled from her ashes, and now it was embedded in his side.
Again.
Cethin hissed out a curse, still keeping his grip on her as he came to a stop on his back. “I understand why you feel I deserve this,” he ground out, pulling the dagger free with his other hand. “But perhaps you need to get a little more creative rather than simply stabbing me.”
“I will ensure the next time I impale you with a sharp object, it will be your end,” she retorted, trying to yank her arm free where she lay on the beach next to him.
He smirked, turning his head to look at her. “It’s another normal day then? Are there any secrets you need to share with me?”
“You’ve been in my dreams. You should know them all by now,” she retorted. “I’d like my dagger back.”
He couldn’t help his bark of laughter. “The dagger you just stabbed me with?”
“I’m already in possession of the other one,” she said, again trying to free her arm from his grasp. “What other dagger would I be referring to?”
“Forgive me for not finding it in my best interest to return the blade you harmed me with.”
She scoffed, twisting again as she sat up, and he followed. “You can let me go now. It’s not as if I can go anywhere.”
“That’s true.”
She looked pointedly at his hand wrapped around her arm. “Then release me.”
His eyes narrowed, but he slowly lifted his fingers from her skin. “We have more to discuss.”
Scooting back across the sand and putting space between them, she replied, “I don’t think I want to speak with you any more today.”
“Too bad. We need to discuss how we move forward from here. You are still my queen.”
“I’m notyouranything,” she spat.
