The least I could do was offer her small comforts.
She nodded with a contented hum, and I sat up and pulled her hand closer to me, massaging in pressured circles. She attempted to fight back a delicious groan of satisfaction that made my cock twitch.
“Yes,” she answered. “You don’t have to do that, though.” But the look of relief that flattened the lines that usually formed between her brow egged me on.
I couldn’t offer her love, couldn’t offer her the perfect marriage, couldn’t even promise to be a good father. Mine had been shit at it. But I knew how to be a good friend—mostly. I could help carry the burden of some of her pain.
“I want to. If it’s friendship you wish for, then let me be a friend. Friends don’t let each other suffer when they can do something about it.”
Sybilla straightened with a grimace—I’d struck a nerve.
Shit. I’d forgotten the sole reason she was agreeing to this. Mattock. The man she loved was possessed by a monster, so she would make do with another for the possibility of his safety. She pulled her hand from mine.
“No, they don’t,” she mused quietly as she slid out of our bed.
I watched her cross the room to her trunk of belongings and pluck out a vial of green tonic. She downed half the vial in one delicate swallow, with an almost imperceptible wince.
“I have one final condition,” she said from the foot of the bed. I couldn’t gather my thoughts to rise or answer. “We will notcome togetherthe traditional way to conceive...” She blushed between the words.
Though I was confused, all of my blood went to my groin to hear her speak so freely about sex.
“I’d like to handle that as professionally as possible.”
That felt like a bucket of cold water to the head. “I see,” I said, not fully understanding.
“I’ve talked to your healer here. There are ways that they can time my cycles, collect from you, and well—it would just be simpler if we involved a healer and kept things...”
“Professional,” I repeated, hating how the word tasted on my tongue.
“I don’t want you to feel guilt or regret when you look at me or our child. Given our desires to remain emotionally independent, it seems a good option,” she noted. “So, I’m glad we could reach this agreement.”
Had I agreed?
Stuck between the right thing to say or do and my desire for self-preservation, I let her slip on her leather slippers and exit the room without saying a word.
Chapter 37
Emmerick
Ryssa hadn’t come for tea. Maybe she was as disgusted with me as I was. Tapping my foot against the sitting room floor, I took a deep breath and stared into my cold cup of tea.
It had been a week since I’d come out of the darkness to find I’d committed another unspeakable crime.
One moment that ass of a King from the Wastelands had been here talking about Sybilla being sick. Then, I’d been standing over Haward’s body.
My own heinous actions shook me.
I should write to someone—confess. But what if it happened with my friends and family nearby? What if I let them into this castle and then tried to hurt them too?
Even if I didn’t harm them, the idea of pulling them into whatever web of evil plagued me felt wrong.
They couldn’t possibly understand.
Ryssa had taken my broadsword that morning a week ago and handled hiding Haward’s body in the garden crypts. I couldn’timagine how she’d done it alone, and when she’d returned, that shadowy void in her robe had stared at me.
“It wasn’t your fault...” she’d reassured me. But how could it not have been? Then she’d asked the most peculiar question. “King Emmerick, have you taken a map from the crypts below the castle?”
I still had no idea what she’d been referring to.
