I know he cannot hurt me, but anger is coming off Charles in waves. Someone is going to suffer for this, and I am the one to blame. My face is feeling hot, as if a sudden fever has set in. Why did I not think to tell Charles about our run-in with Tassilo?
Speaking of the infamous duke, he is closely watching me, as if he is sensing my restlessness. I see it in the way his eyes flick to mine, in the way his posture tightens. When the bishop he has been talking to finally excuses himself, Tassilo comes to me at once.
“You’re shaken,” he says quietly.
“I’m not,” I lie, smiling pleasantly. “It has been a long day, that is all.”
His eyes search my face. “Charles is furious.”
I huff. “Do not worry yourself, his anger comes and goes. I am used to it.”
It is the wrong thing to say.
“You did not tell him about our spontaneous outing,” Tassilo says.
“I did not; it didn’t seem important enough at the time. Now I see that I might have been wrong to keep this from him.” I stack my notes into a neat pile and get ready to depart.
“Is he causing you harm?” Tassilo asks, a hard edge to his voice.
“I’m safe,” I say. I need him to believe it. “Please. You have to trust me.”
He pauses, and I hate myself for asking this of him.
Footsteps echo behind us.
“Tassilo,” Charles says warmly. “Another time.”
A dismissal.
Tassilo bows, but his gaze lingers on me a moment longer than it should. When he turns away, Charles’s hand closes around his shoulder as he leads him to the door.
The door shuts behind Tassilo; he is the last to go.
The air changes.
Charles turns slowly, and the control drains from his face like water from cracked stone.
“You have met with him?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Last week. We were out for a walk with the girls and happened to run into him.” It is not a lie. But it isn’t thewhole truth either.
He paces once, twice, then stops in front of me so abruptly I flinch. His eyes are dark, unfocused, as though something inside him is pulling too hard in too many directions at once.
“I don’t know what you’ve done to me,” he says, voice rough. “I don’t know when it happened. I can’t think. I can’t sleep. Every thought bends back to you.”
The ring on my hand heats up. I feel its magic coil tighter, feeding on whatever he’s feeling, amplifying it until it has nowhere to go.
He takes my wrist, the one he broke many years ago. He pulls me close and holds me there, staring at me.
It’s not desire I see in his gray eyes, it’s…fixation.
I know what’s coming, I know the way the ring turns his anger into passion. A valve for his fury, for his violence, forced inward until it wears the shape of love. And I let him.
He presses his mouth to my skin, then pulls back just as suddenly, breath uneven, eyes bright with something that frightens me.
