Page 58 of A Bond in Blood

My mouth closed.

“Was I too brash in inviting myself into your bath? Yes.”

A cold hit my lungs while his gaze went out to the blue water before us. “Did I allow a part of myself that I fight to keep caged out this morning?” He turned back to face me, and I startled at the regret in his eyes. “Yes. But I have never forced myself into you. I would never.”

I stood, holding up my own hand. “Stop. Now.”

“Brenna.”

My angry tears fell while I turned away from him, scooping my trousers and cloak into my arms.

“Brenna!” he yelled after me, but I picked up my pace, heading down the path that had led me to what I’d thought could have become my oasis.

His hand grabbed the back of my arm, but I screamed causing him to stumble backward.

“You have done nothing but assault my head, heart, and mind!” I cried. My clothes dropped while I slammed my fist against my chest. “You killedhim.You took myonlychance of freedom. For what? A fucking deal! A deal I did not even make!”

My anguish tumbled from me, a storm I could not stop. Words that had been building in my heart. Hate that was changing everything that had once been good about me.

“I have never wanted to kill until that day on the dock,” I admitted, my voice shaking. “But I saw his lifeless eyes and there was nothing more that I wanted.”

I pulled my gaze from the sand beneath my feet, finding Ulrich unmoving.

“I’ve been a pawn in your game, Ulrich, and the insult to know you don’t believe you’ve assaulted me might just push me over the edge.”

“Brenna,” he reached for me, and I laughed.

“You hate me, remember? Do not ever forget that I hate you too.”

Bending, I picked up my trousers and wrapped my cloak around my shoulders. I left the Unseelie King speechless at the opening of the frigid passage I was now forced to forget existed.

Dried and dressed, I ran my fingers along the lines of maps in the corner of the library. The table before me was littered withmy project. The red of the blood moon came through the one expansive window facing toward the water in the distance.

I stood, groaning with my hand on my back, gazing out at the water. The sounds of the nightly party boomed the floors beneath me.

Ulrich hadn’t followed me back to the palace. He hadn’t interrupted my bath or barged in when Adalie had braided my hair back for me.

I had worried at first, hesitant over when he would bring down that hand of punishment.

But when he hadn’t even sent Olen to fetch me for that evening’s festivities, I determined that I’d made the feared Unseelie King tuck his tail between his legs.

Proving me the current victor of our battle.

I moved from the table, settling onto the ottoman leaned against the back wall. I observed the library. The dusty books, the barely available seating.

The room needed a desperate redecoration. Some places to sit and read, to fill one's mind and heart with unending knowledge.

It was evident in the smell and the color of the majority of the books I’d found that this room held Millennia of history. Stories and tales most of our world likely didn’t know exist. Pages filled with names of people long forgotten.

I leaned against the jagged wall of the mountain, my fingers tapping on my knee.

The music floors below me was irritating, beating in repetition. Mocking me in my silence and solitude.

I turned my head, staring out at the water turned red under the moon.

The hours I’d spent out in that frigid blue had been the most restful hours I’d had since leaving my home. With the water cascading over me while my body moved through it. Weightless. Carefree.

Only to have it ripped away in moments by an ignorant tyrant’s proclamations of innocence.

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