“No, but I can see it. Fear and I are old companions. I might need my berserker to show me the exact nightmare, but I can see when it haunts your eyes.”
He didn’t glance in the direction of the priest, but I sensed Bastian’s awareness, detected the effort it took him tonotlook.
“The priest. What did he?—”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I think it does. What did that motherfucker do?”
Bastian locked down his emotions, giving me a completely neutral expression.
I didn’t know how nor when, and I had no interest in examining why…but I was going to make the priest suffer before sending him to meet his maker.
Holding that thought in my mind was enough to ground me to the present instead of letting the past take me. I wasn’t powerless. I could kill everyone in this cathedral with my bare hands if I wanted to, but it didn’t serve my ends in that moment.
Control.
I was in control.
I clenched my jaw and nodded to Bastian. “Just do it.”
He hated this. It was the only reason I could contemplate tolerating it. If I thought he was enjoying my misery, I would’ve lost control and killed him.
He carefully lowered himself onto me, and I flinched involuntarily when his body touched mine.
“That’s it, lad! If she doesn’t wince, you aren’t doing it right.” A ripple of laughter followed the nobleman’s comment.
Bastian pulled away again, shaking his head.
I seized his chin and made him look at me. “I can do it. I told you I can do it!”
The muscles in his neck were rigid with tension. “I can’t. Not going to live with traumatizing you like this.”
From the back of the cathedral, someone loudly called, “The lad seems to be struggling to get it in. Perhaps we should show him where it goes.”
I shuddered.
Bastian launched himself off the altar, naked and livid, cupping between his legs like it might give him some dignity. “Get out,” he growled in a tone monstrous enough to have made my berserker purr.
“A royal marriage must be observed,” the king drawled calmly, as though explaining it to a toddler. He took a sip of his wine and gave us an indulgent smile, one that made tremors of anger pulse through me.
Bastian raised his chin defiantly. “By one priest. That’s all the law calls for. If you want me to perform, you’ll get everyone but him the fuck out.Now.”
He dropped his hands from where he covered himself, revealing he was no longer erect.
Many laughed and called out suggestions. He ignored their mockery, staring down his father.
Bastian was making it about him, about his inability to stay hard with an audience. They’d ridicule him for it, and he knew that, but he was doing it to shield me.
Soft.
Dangerously fucking soft.
The king flicked his hand carelessly. “Everyone out except Father Benedict.”
The crowd filed out the back door of the cathedral until we were alone except for the priest.
Bastian didn’t look at the priest who’d be observing us. But I did.
