He closes the distance between us, reaching for my hand. I yank my arm away, some marrow-deep instinct surging up within me.
Renault looks at me in surprise. “Are you still bewitched?” he asks.
“No,” I reply in a harsh whisper. I do not say that I’m unsure if I ever was—or at least not unwillingly. Besides, hasn’t the Lupa Nox claimed she has no Mysterium? In the battles we’ve since faced, I cannot for the life of me imagine her not using Mysterium, using goetia, if she could.
“Then we mustgo,” Renault hisses. For a moment, in the dancing light, I think I see that gleam again.
My body steps back from him of its own accord. “I-I can’t,” I say haltingly. I can barely believe the words leave my lips, but they do. My betrothed promises me everything will return to what it was—to all the things I once loved and cherished—and yet I rebuke him. I would, evidently, seek an entirely unknown fate in the seat of the Sepulchyre.
Perhaps I have truly gone mad.
“What do you mean? Ophelia,” Renault presses, closing the distance I created. “Don’t be absurd.”
To my endless shame, a sob rips free from my chest. Angry at myself, I shove the tears away roughly with the back of my free hand.
“Stop crying,” Renault snaps, frustrated now.
That creature in the room inside my chest thrashes, its claws tearing at the walls. I swallow hard and hold his gaze through my tears. “I don’t expect this to make any sense to you,” I say, straightening my shoulders, “but I can’t return with you.”
He’s on me then, towering over me just like Sergio did in the Spine a hundred times. “Yes, you can,” Renault snarls, “and you will. The High Ecclesia wants you returned immediately.” He pauses, his upper lip curling as he grabs my wrist. His skin is feverish, his grip punishing as he leans low, speaking directly into my face. “We are departing this placenow.”
White-hot fear skitters through me, and I try to pull away from him, but he only tightens his grasp. “Renault,” I plead, “you’re scaring me. Please. I know you’re angry at me, and you have every right to be. But I don’t want you to doubt that I care about you just as much as you care about me. I just . . . I just can’t go back.”
Something in the man I was to marry cracks then, snapping down the center, as though he’s been torn asunder, just like this broken and abandoned city. He tosses his head back and laughs, the pitch of it wrong, my skin crawling at the sound.
“You think Icareabout you?” Renault barks incredulously. “You, damaged as you are with your limp and your dirtied bloodline? You think your little Spared story means anything to someone like me? Please. Such nonsense is for the commoners. No, Ophelia. You have an important role to play. The High Ecclesia deemed it so. And I am the one, chosen many anni ago, to usher you into that role. All your pathetic loneliness let me walk right into your heart.”
I watch him as he speaks, unable to shake the feeling that an entirely different person is standing before me, wearing my friend’s skin. My stomach twists, and I swallow back a wave of sickness, fighting to pry my wrist from his iron grasp.
“Renault, please,” I beg, my voice rising, the chamber sending it echoing through the dark. A wave of nausea races up my throat, and I nearly choke.
Renault doesn’t answer, but he reaches for my shoulders and digs his fingers into my flesh, pressing me into the stone at my back. He boxes me in with his weight, the front of his body pushing into mine. “You are returning to Lumendei with me,” he says, spittle flying onto my face. “You’re a foundling whelp without even a bitch-mother to call your own. You will obey me, call me master, and yield to whatever I demand of you. There is great glory to be obtained, and I will haveit at any cost.”
He studies me, eyes dark, and then takes a deep, shuddering breath, his body roiling against mine. Just like that night in my chambers, Renault slides his hands down my sides, palming my breasts painfully. That protrusion from his center presses roughly into my belly.
“Ophelia,” he breathes into my hair, “I want to hear you say it. Call me master.”
Chapter 30
My mind bends and twists. Whatever creature thrashes about in my inner room lets out a long, low howl, unused vocal cords shuddering with the effort. My thoughts crystallize into one thing, over and over and over again: how dare he, how dare he,how dare he.
I raise my hands to Renault’s chest and take his tunic into my fists. My hands are strong from anni of labor in the garden, in the library, in the infirmary. There is a thrill, I find, to snatch at a man’s garment the way they so often snatch at a woman’s flesh.
“Let go of me,” I say, raising my gaze to his.
Surprise creases his brow, and then he laughs, sliding his hands to my shoulders and tightening his grip until I wince. “Are you so stupid I need to repeat myself?” he asks, his tone coy and mocking.
Another howl from deep inside my chest rattles my bones. “Areyou?” I retort, tightening my grip, too. “Let. Me. Go.”
For a moment, Renault is silent, inspecting me like I’m a manuscript he might plumb for information. But then he just laughs, his face contorted in a sneer. His lips part, venomous words no doubt lying in wait on his tongue, but someone else’s voice rings through the chamber.
“It’d be best to do as the lady asks.” Nyatrix’s words are like a dagger wrapped in velvet, smooth and decadent on the surface with a dangerous bite lingering just beneath.
I tilt my chin back and stare at Renault. His attention has long since left me; instead, his gaze is fixed over my shoulder, no doubt on the Lupa Nox.
“Do you have any idea who I am?” he demands, his grip on me loosening.
Nyatrix’s scoff slinks through the large chamber. “Renault of House Amadeus, third heir to his Title, one of the Twelve,” she replies, sounding closer with each word. “And I’ll gut you just as easily as I’ve gutted any other man if you do not release her.”
