Page 52 of The Sorcerer of Shadowholde

His hands snaked around her lower back, pulling her in closer, the candle threatening to extinguish in her trembling hand.

“I don’t know. You’re the one who’s been absent for days. I thought you wanted me toshare my meals with you?” Vita said it with humor, but she was utterly serious.

“Oh, darling, as much as I enjoy that, I am a very busy man.”

She just hummed, unsatisfied with his answer. Another question came to mind, one she was frightened to ask for many reasons, but she needed to know.

“Are you enacting compulsions on me?” Her voice echoed through the courtyard, met only by the burbling of the fountain.

Renatus gazed at her, red eyes ablaze with mirth. “Compulsions? Now,wheredid you hear about that?”

Vita just glared, refusing to speak as she awaited his response.

He rolled his eyes with a scoff.

“Of course I’m not, darling. Well, not anymore. The only time was when I compelled you to tell me the truth about the Praetor at my Aonalia Feast.” A long pause. “And when I spoke with your friends at the tavern.”

The only time? How could she know it was the truth? She recalled the sensation, as if her words were a waterfall tumbling out of her mouth, and struggled to remember more instances like it. Was this the answer she wanted, the one she was looking for?

An icy hand was on her cheek, thumb brushing over her scar. “No, I am not enacting compulsions on you. Anything you’re feeling is… self inflicted.”

Self inflicted. What an apt way to put it. Like she’d stabbed herself straight through the chest.

“Do you want me?” She refused to break eye contact, searching his face for something,anything.

A loaded question, one that had many possible meanings.

“Of course I want you. You’re beautiful, Vita.”

His fingers brushed through her hair, tingling the skin on her neck and scalp.

Beautiful. As if that were the only thing that mattered.

“Why didn’t you… why didn’t we… in the astronomy tower?”

“Oh, is that what you wanted? You want me to bury myself inside you? I think that could be arranged.”

Renatus started tugging at her underskirt, and she knocked his hand away.

“Is thatallyou want?” She knew the hurt was clear in her voice, and yet she couldn’t stop herself from asking.

“Yes, Vita. You are my perfect little statue. Sometimes I wish to see your lovely face contorted with pleasure. And sometimes I wish for you to just sit and look pretty for me.”

There was cruelty in his words, but a flash in his eyes, the same as she’d seen so many times. Like he was hurting her purposefully, trying to push her away.

Vita was suddenly weary, the late hour and the tiresome conversation dragging on her.

“Goodnight, Renatus,” she said briskly, pulling out of his grasp and walking back to the palace.

Her body tensed, as if he would grab her, attack her, but no, she was undisturbed as she found her way back to her room, trying not to let the tears spill.

CHAPTER 23

Vita

A WEEK AFTER THE midnight rendezvous in the courtyard, and Vita had still not seen Renatus once. Sometimes it felt like she was the only person in the palace. Even her last two visits to Verian had been brief, her friend busy with his guard duties and unable to take a break.

Now, it was all for the best as her blood was upon her, the cramping pain keeping her in bed for the past three days.

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