Page 67 of Her Dark Reflection

‘While I’m pleased you are enjoying your stint ruling the kingdom,’ he said slowly, ‘I hope you have not forgotten that our bargain remains unfulfilled. There is still one more apple.’

I took a small bite, chewed leisurely, then swallowed and looked up at him. I could see the anger lapping at the corners of his expression, no matter how hard he was trying to remain composed. ‘You must think me a bumbling idiot if you expect that I could have forgotten a single facet of our wretched deal.’

He straightened and regarded me. ‘I’m glad it hasn’t fled your mind. Because now that yourhusband,’ he paused and curled his lip as though the word left a bad taste in his mouth ‘is out of the way, there is nothing keeping us from our final purpose.’ He strolled to my bed and ran his hand down the heavy curtain, then trailed his fingers across my covers. I continued to eat my bread, trying not to be irritated by the fact that he had moved to my bedside table and begun picking up each object on it, studying it for a moment before placing it back down.

‘Interesting that you sayourpurpose, when you’ve never actually told me what you hope to get out of this scheme of yours,’ I said between bites.

‘Surely, you don’t mean to tell me you haven’t worked it out.’ He picked up the hem of the nightdress flung across the bed and rubbed the fabric between his fingertips. The action—and the accompanying thought that the material he was so interested in had been against my bare skin not so long ago—momentarily distracted me, releasing memories I had locked up the moment he stepped foot in the room. They ran rampant through my mind, through my body. His hand sliding up my dress, his mouth in my hair, the smoke and clay smell of him, his fingernails against the soft skin of my thigh. I blinked myself back into the room and hoped he hadn’t noticed the heat in my cheeks, the parting of my lips. Fortunately, he was still facing the bed.

He dropped the nightdress and turned back to face me, his eyes fixing on the bread in my hand. ‘What in all the Shadow Realm are you doing?’

I paused my chewing. ‘What?’

He nodded at the bread. ‘What have you done to it?’

Raising my eyebrows in surprise, I looked at the bread, which I had been taking tiny bites at the edges of, slowly working my way towards the centre in a spiral. ‘I’m eating it.’

He shook his head in disbelief, but was that the hint of a smile I saw at the edge of his mouth? ‘Please stop. It’s distracting.’

I rolled my eyes and dropped the last few bites to my plate. ‘Fine. I’m listening. What exactly do you want me to do now?’

He pulled an apple out of his pocket and tossed it from one hand to the next for a moment, before placing it on the table before me. The sight of it made bile rise in the back of my throat.

‘And who is this foul thing for?’ I asked, the near humour of a moment ago draining from the air.

‘The young princess.’ He circled behind me and stood right by my shoulder. I didn’t move as he picked at a lock of my hair and rearranged it, always seeming determined to touch things he should keep his hands off. My chest suddenly felt tight, my breathing constricted, like I was being buried, his every word another shovelful of dirt being heaped on my cold corpse.

‘What will it do to her?’ I asked, not wanting to know, but needing to know.

‘That really depends. My original intention was simply to marry her and become king, in which case the apple would have her fall in love with me much like Linus fell for you.’

Now he was jumping on that dirt he’d already heaped on me, packing it down, filling my nose and mouth with it, crushing me with it. ‘Why don’t you just give it to her yourself?’ There was barely any sound to my voice.

‘She’s never seen me before in her life. I doubt she’d trust me. Not true of you, however. She seems to like you, doesn’t she? Poor little motherless child.’ He paused as though studying my response, but I remained as still as stone, masking the battle going on within me at the thought of this dark, cruel man married to the beautiful Gwinellyn. Jealousy snarled through me as I thought of him with his hands on her, kissing her like he’d kissed me, touching her like he’d touched me, and I couldn’t stand it. But piled on top of that steaming mess of feelings was the cold weight of dread at the thought of how vulnerable sweet little Gwin would be to someone like Draven.

‘So that’s it, then? You helped me become queen only to cast me aside?’ I finally looked up at him, studying his face, trying to see the depths of his character there. What was the worst of him? Had I already seen it? Was there even more? What would he do to Gwin as her husband? What would he do to Brimordia as its king?

What had I unleashed?

He rested his hand lightly on the exposed skin of my shoulder and I hated the longing that coiled low in my abdomen at the touch. ‘I have been contemplating an alternative to marrying the girl. This is where you have a choice to make.’

A choice. Most assuredly a choice of how much rope I would like to hang myself with. ‘Come out with it.’

‘Marry me yourself.’ He said it so simply, like it was nothing, like this was merely a casual breakfast chat. ‘There are others of the Rauzac line in Yaakendale who might contest your claim once you are queen in your own right, but I’m willing to take the risk and deal with such threats when they come.’

There was something in his voice just beneath the studied indifference. He wanted me to pick this option. Tomarry him.The idea was a dangerous one, a frightening one. I could barely hold my own against him now, how would I do so if he was in my bed?

‘And Gwinellyn?’ I asked, pushing the thought of marriage and all that it would mean to the side for a moment. It was too big and too heady a concept for me to grapple with right now.

‘You’d have to kill her, of course,’ he said matter-of-factly, like the stink of treason, of murder, wasn’t suddenly making me feel like throwing up everything I had just eaten. ‘No one would support your claim over hers.’

A heavy beat of silence echoed through the room. He brushed his thumb back and forth over the skin of my shoulder. Back and forth, back and forth, like he was wearing away at me, grinding me down until I would be left defenceless. ‘Wouldn’t you like to be married to me, Vixen?’ he purred.

I shrugged his hand off and rose from my seat, putting some distance between us. I was beginning to see that he used our physical proximity as a way to unbalance me. ‘I don’t want to hurt Gwinellyn.’

He cocked his head. ‘So, you pick option one?’

‘No,’ I snapped. ‘Maybe I pick neither.’

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