Page 60 of Dark Reign

“You’ve been treated like an animal here?” I asked, doing nothing to hide the disbelief as I turned around and stepped closer, inhaling the very human, veryfemininescent of her. It created a momentary distraction and forced me to soften a bit despite being filled to the brim with rage.

“Hmm … I don’t know,” she answered mockingly, feigning confusion just to dramatize what came out next. “You tell me a more fitting term for being locked and confined in a room without my personal belongings, and we’ll go with that.”

Maddening.

This girl was absolutely maddening.

Her suite had been outfitted with fine linens and artwork, her wound tended to, and her bathroom stocked with imported soaps and oils fit for a queen. And yet, it wasn’t enough.

“I’ve treated you with nothing but kindness since you arrived here,” I reminded her.

“Kindness.” A humorless laugh bubbled from her diaphragm. “I didn’t realize monsters were capable of such a thing.”

“Last I checked, saving someone’s life still counted as kindness, regardless of who did the saving,” I retorted, never once breaking my gaze.

“And what about my things?” she reiterated. “It’s impolite for a lady’s purse to be stolen and rifled through.”

My hands ached when the urge to punch a wall swelled within me.

“First,” I stated, “your purse wasn’t stolen, it was retrieved from the sentinels. Second, whatever you have inside that’s so precious has remained untouched. No one has so much asbreathedon it, let alone opened the thing and rifled through it,” I scoffed, burning on the inside to blurt the rest. “And lastly, it would be remiss of me not to state that being a woman doesn’t make you a lady.”

The comment didn’t rattle or offend her. Not even a little and, God help me, I liked that she hadn’t faltered. I liked that she could hold her own and was obviously readying herself to deliver another insult. It’d been years since anyone other than my brothers had spoken their minds around me. And although the conversation with Corina was a heated one, her honesty was refreshing.

Seeing her get bothered and flustered was just … downright sexy.

For instance, she seemed to rather enjoy sharing that she thought of me as a monster—a point I would never argue against.

“Well, Your Highness,” she said hatefully, “since I’m stuck here, a little trust between us might go a long way, and holding my belongings captive isn’t exactly helping matters.”

The smile I held in broke free now and the sight of it seemed to surprise her. I guessed by the way her brow quirked and how that scowl of hers faded ever so slightly.

“Trust? This from the girl who won’t even tell me her real name.”

Only the whites of her eyes showed when she rolled them to the back of her head. “I’ve already told you my name,” she sighed. “It’s not my job to make you believe me.”

Both arms locked tight across her chest when she folded them.

I decided to play her little game. “Corina what? I’ll need a last name.”

Her expression straightened. The question was somewhat of a trap. Humans didn’t typically have surnames worth protecting, seeing as how they were made up and issued by orphanages purely for identification purposes. So, I fully expected her to rattle off one of the fifteen or twenty that commonly circulated, but instead …

“I won’t give you that,” were the words that escaped her lips, hinting toward a bigger picture I wasn’t allowed to see.

I hated that I found her vagueness so intriguing. The more the hours stretched, the more of a puzzle she became. My thoughts went back to the news Dr. Driskel had just delivered regarding her condition and, for reasons I couldn’t pin down, it made me marvel at her strength even more.

What kind of girl behaved so brazenly despite being stricken with such an illness?

A wave of silence broke up what had once begun to resemble a shouting match, one I was sure my brothers heard loud and clear. However, now, the conversation had cooled to a reasonable pitch. Corina seemed to notice the shift in tone when I did, forcing her gaze away from mine. She touched her fingers to her cardigan where, just beneath the material, lie a fresh tattoo on her shoulder.

This … magnetism between us, it reared its ugly head at the strangest times. Like now, when we should have only been focused on our frustration toward one another.

I stared into her brown eyes, hating that I sensed the raw emotion within them, reminding myself of the outcome thelasttime I was swept up in her allure. The thought of it sobered me instantly.

I hadn’t forgotten the humiliation when I realized that I’d mistaken her heat for mutual attraction, a sign that I’d gotten to her just like she’d gotten to me.

Or how she caused my heart—which typically only beat once or twice a minute—to hammer inside my chest the moment I laid eyes on her, warming my body until my temperature nearly matched hers. I’d never felt something so raw, sointense,in my entire life.

What I hadn’t realized at the time was that it had all been an illusion. Whether it was my ego or naivety, I made pulling off this scheme so easy for her, giving her every opportunity to make a mockery of the Dynasty.

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