Page 50 of Married By Treachery

“Who told you this?” His voice was low and dangerous. He was not playing around anymore.

“No one told me anything. As I said: they were dreams.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

She looked back at him. Their gazes collided like crossed blades. “I am not lying, Highness, and I don’t play games. It is the truth.”

He studied her, his expression inscrutable. “Do you often dream?”

“More often than I would like.”

He searched her as if he could find the lie hidden somewhere in her expression. “Is it always of the things that have transpired?”

“Not always,” she answered. “Sometimes it is the future I see.”

His gaze penetrated. “Have you seen my future?”

Raquel’s lips parted, but she hesitated. Did she tell him what she had seen of them? Of their children?

Jake grabbed her face between his hands, and Raquel froze, instantly transported back to her dream, but the look inthisJake’s eyes was not loving. It was deadly and furious and serious, and maybe even a little afraid. “What have you seen?”

Raquel swallowed, caught between his large hands. Caught between dream and reality. “I…don’t know.”

“What do you meanyou don’t know?”

“I mean that what I’ve seen doesn’t make any sense.”

Jake’s gaze bored into hers as if he might stare the truth out. “Explain.”

“I saw…us.”

His brow furrowed, his grip softened, and he leaned back a fraction, wary. “What were we doing?” His tone had turned cautious.

Raquel felt her cheeks flame, but she pressed on. “Watching our children. A girl and a boy. The boy looked just like you, but the girl favored me, and we…”

Jake dropped his hands and turned his face away. “Utterly preposterous.”

The words hurt. Raquel wasn’t expecting them to. “You asked. I’m just telling you what I saw.”

Jake sat still and quiet. He still hadn’t urged Vizzi to walk, and Vizzi snorted with restlessness. “Who else knows about this…unique little gift of yours?”

“My father and my brother, Lee.”

“Yes, I imagine they wouldn’t want that groveling little weasel Hamarr knowing anything about your little gift, would they?” Jake murmured to himself, and then—to her surprise—he dismounted.

His boots landed upon dried leaves with a crunch. “We’re here.”

Raquel blinked, surprised, and it took her a moment to adjust from their tense conversation to the landscape immediately surrounding them.

Raquel saw nothing that resembled a private dwelling, not until Jake began walking, and then she slowly made sense of a structure in the mist. Straight lines for walls, and a flat rooftop to close them in. Not much of a dwelling from what she could tell. She jumped down from Vizzi, then followed after Jake, and as she neared the structure, she realized that the mist hadn’t obscured anything at all. Itwasjust a tall and simple box made of old, knotted wood that was slowly being reclaimed by the forest.

“What is this, a privy?” Raquel asked, more to herself.

She thought she heard Jake chuckle.

“No, it’s my mother’s,” he said, then opened the door and ducked through.

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