Pride—that’s what he had.
He came down the dais.
One step. Two. Three.
He crossed the marble floor and then stopped three paces away from me.
He was leaving the last distance to me.
I opened my mouth.
“I’m sorry — “
I paused, tried to compose myself, tried to understand what the hell was going on, who the hell he was, why on earth I was feeling like I was about to explode. My body hummed, my brain rattled in my skull.
“I’m sorry, I don’t—I don’t know how I got here, I’m sorry, I’m not—I’m not dressed for—I think there’s been a mistake, I’m so sorry, I’m just a—I’m nobody, really, I’m just a—“
He raised a hand.
One hand. The right hand. The one with the ring on it. He lifted it like a conductor lifting a hand at the beginning of a piece—not high, not hard, just enough—and my mouth, which had been on automatic for nine years, stopped.
It just stopped.
“No.”
He said it very quietly.
“Not sorry. Not from you.”
He let that sit.
The gold of his eyes did not leave my face.
“Never from you.”
Never.
He spoke again.
“You have been brought across the Veil.” He said it as though I should understand it, as though it was impossible to believe thatanyone wouldn’t recognise the meaning behind the words. “The Rite of Ascension has chosen you. You are my fated mate. I am Pride, the Lord of the High Citadel, the third of the seven sons of the Demon King, presumptive heir to the Obsidian Throne.”
I heard about half of it.
The mouth was making sentences and the sentences were going past me like water streaming past rock—they got around me, they touched me at the edges, and they did not, on the whole, get in. Fated mate. Veil. Rite. Ascension. Lord. High Citadel. Demon King. Obsidian Throne.
Pride. He wasPride? A demon lord?
Two of the other words got in, too.
Fated. Mate.
I caught those. I felt a sudden flush of arousal at the thought of it. I was supposed to mate with him?
It was crazy. There had to have been a mistake.
I formed the argument in my mind.
You have the wrong woman. I am not a fated anything. I am not a mate of anything. I felt a little nervous laugh at the back of my throat.
