“Did no one tell you how unwise it is to run from bears,álainn?”
Once or twice.
But I’d hold my breath and die before admitting that tohim. The Shadow King wasn’t the only one capable of stubbornness.
“I will not…” I growled, my cheek pressed to the glass. “I willnotmake a baby with someone who thinks so little of me. Who let me sit in fear of rejection while he laughed at me from behind a wall.”
“You think I was laughing at you?” His cold voice heated like iron over flame. “You think I let you stew? I was the one stewing, Sadie. The oneburning alivein your heat.”
“What?” My eyes darted, but I couldn’t find him in my peripheral vision.
“You don’t know how hard I fought against this. How hard I tried to do the right thing—forallof us—and send you away.” His mouth hovered behind my neck now, breathing on but not touching the spot the Shadow King had already identified as an erogenous zone.
And I couldn’t help it. A shiver ran up my spine, sending another rush of slick down my thighs.
“Tadhg and the Shadow King won’t ever tell you. Because they’re kind. But I, dearest Sadie, am not,” he informed me.
I stilled. Because I believed him. I’d felt it—how often the other two held back, even when I asked direct questions. I couldn’t stop myself from taking his bait. “What didn’t they tell me?”
“That you are our ruin.” His voice cracked against my ear. “The reason I can no longer do business in The Above. The reason I can’t think. Can’tfunction.”
A growl rumbled in his chest. “I’ve watched nothing but Sadie on the wall telly for weeks. How dare I? How dareyoucast this spell? Making meobsessedwith you, even though I knew it would mean abandoning every value I’ve built my life on.”
My hand pounded the glass beside where he had me pinned. “You think that’smyfault?”
“Who do you think was watchingyou, Sadie?” he demanded, pushing the side of his face into mine. “Who sent Tadhg after you when he heard you crying in the night? Who told him to pick up those whittling knives I couldn’t stop myself from ordering for you from the kingdom armorer? Who started texting thattraitoragain when you ran off with the insane Mountain Princess my brother married?”
That… that was him? Declan?
My mind nearly buckled, trying to take it all in.
But—
“I didn’t… I didn’taskyou to…I didn’t ask for you or any of this!”
“Do you think you had to,álainn?” he growled. “All you had to do was appear to destroy my life. I didn’t know you were ruinous at first. I holed myself up in my room, thinking that at any moment I could put an end to this madness. But no…”
The High King pressed his nose to my neck, audibly breathing in my scent.
“You just had to smell like strawberries, didn’t you? My perfect scent match. And you had the nerve to be good in bed. After claiming you’d only had bad sex and your own hand for years. Why didn’t you tell us from the start what you really were? Youruinous witch.”
His accusation sent another shiver through my body, even as I protested, “I’m not a wi?—”
“If you’re not a witch, tell me what you are then!”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I didn’t even know what I was anymore. All I could feel was the weight of his body, the sting of his words, and the throbbing, drenched ache between my legs.
“What kind of true innocent casts a spell over a High King like this?” he asked in my ear. “Makes him abandon all his principles just so he can watch you all day with his cock in his hand?”
My breath caught.
Not from shock. Not from shame. But because some messed-up part of me… liked hearing that. Liked knowing he watched. Liked that so many of his waking thoughts had been filled with me the way mine had been filled with him.
“Do you have any idea how much I hate you, Sadie Ellis?” he growled. “It’s a lot. Almost as much as I desire you. Because I couldn’t. I couldn’t say no to this marriage, no matter how sensible it would have been. No matter how badly it fucked my life in The Above, I couldn’t resist.”
“You could have left,” I countered. “You live in a palace. You could have gone to any other room in the house.”
“Don’t think I didn’t try, my witch of a queen. But I couldn’t close my eyes unless yours were. Couldn’t look away from even a second of your training. You had me watching you likeAClockwork Orange.”
