I swallow. “Think about what?”
“Me.” The word hangs between us. He lets the silence stretch for a heartbeat before continuing. “What happened in the inn, back at the camp.” His eyes hold mine, and I can’t look away. “Do you think about it,Moirthalen?”
The way he says it—that word that meansspoiled princess—shouldn’t make heat curl low in my stomach. But it does.
“Sometimes.” The bargain’s magic won’t let me stop there. “More than I should. It comes back at odd moments. When I’m trying to sleep, when you’re standing too close. I think about the water on your skin, the way you looked at me when you caughtme staring.” I close my eyes, mortification making my cheeks burn. “What it would feel like to touch the marks on your skin.”
I try to stop speaking. I can’t.
“At night, when I can’t sleep … when you’re close and I can feel the heat coming off you. When I’m supposed to be thinking about escape, and instead I’m thinking about your hands. Your mouth. What you did to me at the inn. What you did in the tent.” My voice turns hoarse. “Wanting things I shouldn’t want.”
I clamp my mouth shut, but it’s too late. The silence that follows is thick.
“What do you want from me?” I force the question out, desperate to turn this back on him, to make him give me something real instead of the scraps he’s throwing at me.
“I haven’t decided yet.”
My eyes pop open. “What does that mean?”
“Not your turn.” His voice doesn’t change, but his eyes do, turning sharper, more focused. “Did you enjoy watching me kill those men on the road?”
I freeze in my chair. His eyes track my reaction. I don’t want to answer, but I have no choice.
“It was horrible. People dying. Blood everywhere. Bodies falling. I should have only felt horror. Ididfeel horror.” The magic presses harder, and the rest comes spilling out. “But I was inside your head, and watching you move like that, the way you flowed through them … the grace of it.” My throat closes. “I watched you kill, and part of me liked it.”
I can’t look at him.
“I felt sick about it then. I feel sick about it now. What kind of person feels that? What kind of person watches men die and feels—” I swallow hard.
“Finish the sentence.”
“I can’t.”
“There are consequences for breaking a bargain.” His voice is soft. The softness is worse than if he’d snapped at me. “Answer the question.”
I squeeze my eyes closed again. “Part of me was aroused by the violence of it, byyourviolence.”
The silence that follows is unbearable. I’ve just confessed to enjoying watching him kill. I want to take it back. I want to be anywhere but here, stripped bare by his questions while he sits there watching me unravel.
“Time to ask your question.” He breaks the silence.
“Why … why haven’t you decided? What you want from me. Why haven’t you decided?”
“Because you keep surprising me.”
I don’t even know how to respond to that. I don’t know what it means. He’s watching me out of those gold eyes, and I can’t read a single thing in them.
His next question comes soft and unhurried, his voice almost lazy. “Has anyone kissed you before me?”
“Once.” The word comes out before I’m ready. “A lord’s son. I let him because I was curious. It was wet and clumsy, his tongue pushing past my teeth without any skill. He grabbed at me and seemed to think that was seduction.” I wrinkle my nose, and he laughs quietly—a low sound that does strange things to my pulse. “I wiped my mouth afterward. It was disappointing. I thought that’s what kissing was … underwhelming, and slightly unpleasant. I couldn’t understand why the serving girls giggled about it.”
The magic nudges me to continue.
“Then you kissed me in the inn, and I realized I was wrong … about kissing. About what it could feel like when someone knew what they were doing … when someone wanted to make me feel it.”
His eyes flicker.
“Why does it matter? If anyone has kissed me before.”
