Page 25 of The Poison Princess and the Lord of Misrule

Since I’ve been in Kravenholt, King Aldric has never once come to my bedchamber. It’s the one relief I’ve been granted, knowing I have that protection, that he can’t enter without invitation, or a ceremony to claim me as his.

Tonight, that frail sense of safety is broken.

It’s late evening when the intrusion comes. The afternoon light has faded and the corridors are quiet, and the only person near me is Isolde, sitting on the chaise mending a tear in my riding cloak.

Aldric has always summoned me to him. The throne room. The great hall. His private dining chamber. An audience always on his terms, in his spaces.

So I’m shaken when my door swings open, seeing him in my mirror. And I question if he’s inebriated, his crown slipping slightly askew atop his white-blond hair. He fillsthe doorway with his crimson silks, his long fingers stacked with rings, and the smell of him precedes his entrance into the room. A heady cologne he wears, smoky notes of vetiver, woodsy sandalwood, and cardamom spice.

Nothing like the sweet mint and sugar I experienced with Ren.

Isolde rises so quickly her needlework hits the floor. “Your Majesty.” She drops into a curtsy. “Forgive me, I wasn’t?—”

“Leave us.” Aldric doesn’t even look at her. His arctic blue eyes are fixed on me seated at the vanity. I feel his prowling gaze touch the back of my head, trailing the curve of my neck just visible above the open collar of my nightgown. “Now.”

Isolde’s spine stiffens. Her eyes find mine in the mirror, a question flashing there, the silent offer that she will remain if I ask her to. She’d risk a flogging for me, I know she would. But I couldn’t bear it.

I incline my head. The smallest nod, permitting her to leave.

She curtsies again, slower this time, before she reluctantly slips past the king.

Aldric crosses the room toward me. Bracing my spine, I hold my place. I keep my hands in my lap, my back straight, my eyes fixed on his approach in the mirror, refusing to face him directly. Letting my body speak for how inappropriate this invasion of privacy is.

Whatever he came here to do to me, he will have to be brute about it.

I won’t make it easy for him.

He stops behind my vanity stool. His ringed fingers clasp my shoulder. I’m thankful for the thin silk of my night robe that prevents his bare touch.

“My beautiful bride,” he murmurs, his deep voice overly saccharine. His touch turns possessive, his thumb tracing my spine, inducing a reactive shiver.

But I do not flinch.

A blade does not weep.

“I feel like you’ve been hiding from me,” he accuses. His fingers drift lower, brushing the edge of my neckline, making my skin prickle. “Holed up in your rooms with your books and your handmaiden. I begin to wonder if you’ve forgotten you have a king to serve.”

I lift my chin. “I forget nothing, Your Majesty.”

“Aldric,” he corrects sternly.

I lift my chin a measure higher. “As you wish, Aldric. I simply meant, you’ve been kept away much by the revolt, your attention needed elsewhere.”

His other hand finds my hair and lifts the dark strands, his fingers sliding through the length and applying a testing tug that makes me tense. “Mm,” he hums. “Seems I’ve been neglectful of my bride. I will have to remedy that before we’re to be married in a few weeks.”

A few weeks.

The number lands in my chest like a stonedropped into a well, hollow and sinking. I’ve been measuring my time in days, given the illusion of a longer timeline. I haven’t been allowing myself to look at the calendar, to see that it’s now less than a month that the whole of my freedom has shrunk.

“The weeks will pass quickly, My Lord,” I say softly in an attempt to pacify him. My hand clenches the fabric of my gown.

“I fear not quickly enough.” His hand moves to the back of my neck, where the fine hairs lift in protest. His fingers linger there, applying the barest pressure, just the threat of a grip. A reminder of how easily he could close his hand and end my breathing if he chose. “And do you know what I’m most looking forward to, my bride?”

I don’t provide an answer.

His chuckle is low. “As a Threnmere girl, I think you can imagine.”

His voice has dropped to a low rasp, intimate, seductive. His thumb strokes the nape of my neck. His other hand slides down the front of my shoulder and finds the slope of my chest above the neckline, pausing just at the edge of decency, his rings cold against my skin.