“Or how about,” his voice darkened and lowered, “you tell me why you released the hospital footage of your father in his Swift form for the entire galaxy to see?”
He’d thought he’d been uneasy, but Silver recognized the foreign feeling within him now for what it truly was. Fear.
He was afraid.
“Save your explanation,” Nuri said when Silver had remained silent for too long.
“I did it for you,” Silver told him anyway, wincing when he realized too late how that sounded.
“You did it for you!” Nuri disagreed. “Because you’re selfish. You always have been, and yet I was too stupid to see it. If it wasn’t aimed at me I could make excuses for you, but this, this is too far. You screwed over your own father!”
“He was already dead.”
Nuri looked at him with pure, undiluted disgust.
“It was the only thing I could think of at the time,” Silver frantically added. Panic was starting to cloud his mind and his usually carefully crafted responses were becoming impossible to summon. “When I realized you meant to leave me—”
“I was leaving the position,” Nuri corrected. “I was going to resign as your secretary. Which I have the right to do.”
“You were going to leave me,” he snapped. “Don’t think I didn’t know about your plans to visit your siblings and stay there. On a different planet. Completely out of my reach.”
“You mean your control!” Nuri planted both hands on Silver’s chest and shoved him with all his might, and surprisingly, Silver stumbled. “That’s all you care about! You just don’t want to lose! Well, the joke’s on you, because you just did.”
Silver glanced down at the dice Nuri was pointing at. “That doesn’t count.”
“Like hell it doesn’t.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Then neither do the first three rounds,” Nuri said, “but, wait. You already cashed in on those wins, didn’t you?”
“Nuri—”
“Was it fun?” He growled. “Taking advantage of me like that? Laughing on the inside every time I got my hopes up when we played?”
“You wanted it just as much as I did.” Silver knew, on some level, he should probably shut up, but his temper seized hold, and the looks Nuri kept giving him only made it worse. Maybe some of this was about control, but not all of it, not nearly, and if Nuri would only calm down for a moment Silver could explain.
It was the wrong thing to say though, because as soon as the words left his mouth, Nuri straightened and went still.
“You’re right,” he stated, but it was somehow worse than when he’d been yelling a second ago even though he was seemingly agreeing. “I did want it. I wanted to know what it would be like to be fucked by an Imperial, and since Brix was shipped off planet when we were in college, you were the next best thing. I wanted to know what it was like to be screwed by an emperor, and now I know. So, I guess since that curiosity has been appeased, there’s no reason for me to stick around.”
“Narek.” If he was implying he’d used Silver for his cock he was going to pay. He couldn’t allow himself to dwell on that comment about Brixton or he really would explode, which wouldn’t do either of them very good in this situation. His hands clenched at his sides, hard enough his knuckles turned white. “I’m warning you.”
“What? Don’t like hearing the truth?” He snorted. “That makes two of us. I certainly didn’t enjoy learning all the ways you’d played me, and yet here we are. In some ways, I suppose we both lost, and I wish I could tell you I’m sorry for it but I’m not. I hope you rot,majesty, but I won’t stick around to see it.”
Nuri was already halfway to the door by the time Silver’s brain processed what was about to happen.
He was going to leave. Really. And once he was out in the hall, once he’d taken that first step outside of this room, there was going to be nothing Silver could do to stop him. There was always the option of tying him up and forcing him, but if the way Nuri was reacting to all of this was any indicator, all that would do was push the other man further away and that wasn’t what Silver wanted.
They’d been so close…Just a few more days, a week maybe, and Silver had been positive he could convince Nuri to accept the title of Royal Consort.
It couldn’t end like this.
He couldn’tlose.
Whenever Nuri had gotten angry with him before, Silver had been calm. Able to come up with ways to defuse the situation, since he’d known he had plenty of time thanks to the six-week long game. He’d been confident he could convince Nuri to forgive him for any and all past transgressions before the end. But now that he’d been caught, there was no guarantee. Nothing to fall back on.
He didn’t know what to do, and that was so far out of character for him, the feeling of hopelessness, a feeling he’d certainly never experienced before, was overwhelming.
