Page 137 of Queen of Nothing

Because he won.

And I’m the loser who slides down the windowsill and drops to the floor.

I bring my knees up and run my hands over them, back and forth, as if to soothe the trickles of anxiety nipping their way through my body.

“I expected more theatrics.”

I loll my head back against the window.

I say nothing, because I have nothing to say. Only horror spreading inside of me. Gutting me.

He turns his cheek to me and looks out onto the gardens. “I will be a fair husband. I will be generous and loyal—and in return, I expect your compliance.”

Obedience, he means.

My total and utter submission.

A dark tumbling storm is rising in me.

I breathe through it.

The mockery drips from my tone, “A love story for the ages.”

“Love,” he echoes, soft. “You asked me once if I loved you—of course you did not know it was yourself you were asking about.”

At the Debutante Ball, when I asked if he loved his new, mysterious fiancé.

I still remember what he said then.

‘At times.’

“But marriages are not for love, Olivia.” He says it so flippantly that it’s as though he’s talking about the weather. “Marriages are for politics.”

That is just not true.

Mother and Father love one another.

It’s something I always knew never to dream for myself, never to reach for. Sometimes we just know what is not meant for us.

But that is such a sad thing.

To live without love.

Tears thicken my voice, “Isn’t there space for it?”

Dray studies me, long and hard, and his eyes flicker like steel blades caught in the moonlight. “Mistresses.”

His answer is so empty that I suspect he hardly believes his own words. In fact, there is no place for mistresses among the aristos.

So he answers with a lie.

Because Dray is incapable of love.

I shake my head, stubborn. “Aristos men don’t take mistresses, so your answer is bullshit.”

It’s the way. Tradition. How can a man be taken seriously in business, be trusted, when he can’t even stay loyal to his wife?

But Dray’s grin churns my stomach.