Page 110 of The Vespertine Treaty

But he didn't.

"Then you are a fool," he whispered.

He opened the door and walked out, the click of the latch sounding like a judge’s gavel in the silent room.

I didn't scream. I didn't throw anything at the closed door.

I sat there, the tears cooling rapidly on my cheeks, turning into icy tracks.

A fool.

The word echoed in the empty room, bouncing off the velvet and the stone. He had rejected me. I had stripped myself bare, offered him the only thing I had left—my comfort, my presence—and he had looked at it, deemed it too dangerous, and walked away.

He thought he was being noble. He thought he was saving me from the fire.

But as the shock faded, a cold, familiar heat replaced it.

He wasn't saving me. He was controlling me. AGAIN.

Just like my mother. Just like Malathor. Cain was deciding what I could handle. He was deciding where the lines were drawn. He was looking at me and seeing glass that needed to be put back in a cabinet, not a female who had just survived hell and was just asking to be held. For comfort.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand, the motion aggressive, rough against my healing skin.

"Fine," I whispered to the empty air.

If he wanted to be the monster in the tower, brooding and untouchable, then let him. If he wanted to build a wall of ice between us to 'protect' me, he would find that I was very good at climbing. Or demolishing.

I felt the familiar steel spine of the Aenite survival instinct snap back into place. The vulnerability I had felt for the last nine days—the hazy, drug-like need for his approval—evaporated.

He wanted a war? He wanted to push me away?

I would make him regret every inch of distance he put between us.

I collapsed back onto the pillows, pulling Poppy against my chest. My golden fox, sleepy, sensing the shift in my mood, her little nose twitching.

For the first time in ten days, I didn't pray for safety.

I prayed for this feeling—this pathetic, needy ache in my chest—to go away. I prayed for my skin to harden into his bloody armour.

I stared at the door he had walked through, my eyes narrowing.

My husband was back on my shit list.

CHAPTER 37

OPHELIA

In the following days, the four walls of my bedchamber began to feel less like a sanctuary and more like a sarcophagus.

I began to leave the safety of the velvet drapes, forcing my legs to move, forcing my lungs to accept the air of the corridors. I moved around the estate with a deliberate, noisy cadence, reclaiming the space inch by inch. I remembered, with a distinct and petty thrill, how much my dear husband used to hate my daily strolls. He found them inefficient. He found them distracting.

So, I made sure to be as distracting as possible.

To my immense displeasure, however, the target of my annoyance was nowhere in sight. The halls were empty. The conservatory was silent. The courtyards were abandoned.

Ugh.

I trailed a hand along the cold stone banister, fighting the urge to flinch when the texture reminded me of damp dungeon walls. I shook the thought away, replacing the fear with irritation. Whatdoes a lady have to do around here to piss the big, bad, brooding monster off? I was practically offering myself up as a nuisance, and he had the audacity to be invisible.