Page 31 of Bride of the Fae Duke

‘They were my mother’s,’ he said softly. ‘My father must have put them away after she was made to leave.’

Sweet divines. She’d known she’d have to bring up the topic over the course of the evening, but not likethis– not sprung upon him before he’d even finished his entrée. ‘I’m so sorry – I didn’t realise—’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he interrupted, his voice still unnaturally quiet. ‘I’m glad you found them, frankly.’

She wasn’t sure what to reply to that, so she settled for a watery smile and a nod. Thankfully, the footmen choose that moment to serve the soup; the silence was not nearly as pressing with the clanking of spoons and pans to break it.

It was only after Locke –Othrys, damn it – dismissed them that he met her gaze again, spoon hovering delicately over his plate. ‘You wanted to discuss something?’

No small talk. No polite enquiries after her day. She should have expected it – she should begladfor it, with her own life on the line – and yet the weight in her stomach felt suspiciously close to disappointment.

She blew a whiff of steam off her spoon, overly conscious of her inelegant fingers around the silverware, and admitted, ‘It does concern your mother, to be honest.’

‘Ah.’ There was no resentment on his face as he took a first bite, nodded approvingly at his plate, then lowered his hand and added, ‘I see. Go ahead, then.’

‘We found her portrait in the attic.’ A stunningly beautiful woman, smiling alluringly at them from the canvas – her face inhumanly sharp, her neck and arms adorned with scaly patterns not unlike her son’s. Nellie had known who she was before she’d read the small name plate:Lithrina, Duchess ofLocke.‘Stashed away in the back. Mrs. Hartnell suggested adding her to the gallery of family portraits in the hall, but I wasn’t sure …’

‘I see,’ he said.

He said it so very calmly. He took his next bite of pea soup so very guardedly. But something seemed to have changed about his face, about the look in his storm cloud eyes – an echo of lost laughter haunting the corners of his expression.

Nellie waited, sipping soup from her spoon and trying not to look like a toddler holding cutlery for the very first time.

‘What do you think?’ he asked.

She almost spilled soup on her skirt. ‘What? Me?’

‘Yes?’ He did not look like he was mocking her – the opposite, if anything. ‘It’s your life she’s threatening, after all. Would you feel unsafe, walking past her every day? Would she remind you of the danger?’

Sweet divines. She hadn’t eventhoughtabout her own opinion yet.

‘I … I’m not sure.’ The words left her mouth in a stammer. ‘To be honest, I half expected you’d never want to see her again. You’re the one who lost … well …’

Six wives – but six timeshimselfas well, six quiet, creeping deaths that no one in Elidian whispered about. Deaths she had come to recognise only gradually herself, marked by gravestones in disguise – his sketches in a forgotten drawer. His abandoned books, his empty home. Most of all, that cold, dispassionate demeanour, so different from the man she’d glimpsed in unguarded moments – every spark of joy buried deep behind that fortress of composure, as if to spare him all other feelings, too.

I’m poison, Eleanor.

She wasn’t sure when she’d started seeing him as a victim rather than a murderer, his bleeding heart as a wound rather than a weapon. She only knew he wouldn’t believe it – not truly.

Her husband did not fill the silence. He sat motionless on the other side of the table, eyes trained on his plate, the slits of his pupils wider than she’d ever seen them. In the dim light, his jawline was sharp as a blade – as if she’d cut herself if she were to wrap her hands around his face.

Not that she would ever do any such thing, of course.

‘Othrys?’ she said quietly instead, and suddenly the intimacy of that name seemed the most familiar thing in the world.

His shoulders clenched as he lowered his spoon onto his plate and rubbed his temple, sending a single strand of blue hair fluttering down onto his shoulder. ‘Ishouldnot want to see her face ever again.’ Flat, curt, factual words. ‘I ought to tell you to tear the bloody portrait to shreds, after all the suffering she caused. So if that’s the answer you’d prefer to hear … feel free to accept it. Feel free to fling it into the nearest canal and never think of it again.’

The easy answer.

But she’d seen him look at those plates –plates, for goodness’ sake. The first tangible trace of his mother’s existence in divines knew how long, in this city that no longer even allowed her existence, and he’d soaked it up like a man dying of thirst.

‘It’s not the truth, though, is it?’ she whispered.

His throat bobbed. ‘No.’

Again she waited – a silence brimming with conflicting desires, the hollowness of it growing crueller with each passing heartbeat.

She knew that silence. She knew the war raging on his face. She remembered coming home from the market with the few bruised, half-rotten vegetables their last pennies could buy and finding their little house similarly quiet, the damning absenceof Father’s comforting whistle or his heavy footsteps on the creaking boards …

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