“I thought you were going to rest,” I say sweetly. In fact, I’d counted on it, specifically waited for a revel that Bram was too exhausted to attend, but it seems my planning has been in vain.
Bram looks down at me, emotion flickering in his gray eyes. “I decided I’d rather be with you. If I didn’t know any better, I’d be wounded. It’s almost like you don’t want me here.” He keeps his face neutral, his voice soft, but I know Bram well enough by now to detect the simmering rage underneath. It’s in the bruising pressure against my ribs as he clutches me to his side. To anyone else in the crowd, it might look like we’re in love. Just as quickly, he lets me go.
Bram ascends the dais in the front of the room and gestures for me to join him. There is no second throne; I am expected to sit on his lap or stand behind him.
I long for the days when I could glance across a crowded ballroom, catch his eye, and he would smile at me reassuringly.
I know now it was only an act, but he was so good at it, it might as well have been real. It was real to me.
I step up to the dais and plant a kiss on his cheek, making sure his courtiers are watching. One of the strangest things about Bram is that his body is never warm like a human’s. His skin is always the same temperature as the air around it. When my lips brush him, it feels like I’m kissing something dead.
He doesn’t quite smile but his eyes soften as he looks at me. A lock of sun-kissed light brown hair falls across his forehead.
“King Bram!” Some preternaturally beautiful woman with elaborately braided silver hair bounds up to him. “Dance with me!”
“I’m with Ivy,” he says quietly.
She laughs, so big I can see right down her throat. “We don’t know her! She doesn’t matter!”
Bram steps down from the dais and kicks the woman’s feet out from under her, sending her falling to her knees on the marble floor. He grips a fistful of her hair and yanks her head back, until she’s staring up at me, gasping in pain.
“She’s your queen,” he says coolly. “Apologize.”
“I’m sorry,” she sputters.
“Your Majesty,” Bram corrects her. “You’re sorry to HerMajesty.”
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” she squeaks. Bram releases her hair almost dismissively.
The woman glances at me disdainfully as she rises to her feet, but doesn’t risk saying anything else with Bram so near. She is quickly scooped up by the elbow and pulled into a chain of Others, dancing in circles.
I look up at Bram and he plucks a streamer from where it must have been stuck in my crown.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I say.
“Of course I did.”
I open my mouth. Close it again. I’m at a loss for how to respond.
It would be easy to imagine he cares for me, in small moments like this. But then I catch a glimpse of the group of enchanted humans and their blood-soaked feet in the middle of the ballroom and know Bram is incapable of true care.
What exists between us is something stranger and darker: not care, certainly not love.
“You should really be more careful.” His face is unreadable in a way that turns my blood to ice.
“I’m not sure what you mean.” Deny, deny, deny. That’s the only tool I have in my arsenal.
“I have a gift for you. It should arrive tomorrow,” he says, still remote.
And then he’s gone, off to merrymake with some other group of sneering advisers.
Across the ballroom, Faith and Marion are doing their jobs flawlessly. They’re positioned next to the banquet table, locked in conversation with Rhion.
Things with Aurelia may have gone sideways, but that doesn’t mean our work tonight is through.
“Your Majesty.” Faith waves me over to join them. Rhion is difficult to pin down, but I’m hoping Bram seeing me in conversation with him will make him happy. If I’m lucky, perhaps Rhion will even tell Bram how devoted, how loyal I seem.
Rhion tips his head in a bow as I approach.
