Page 53 of Antiletum
Whispers lull into Delaney’s ear. I tell her all the things I wish I had since we wed. That she’s beautiful.Mine. That she can rest, and I will hold her up for the rest of our days. That nothing could ever tear us apart now.
My bride.Myperfect wife.
“This doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” I rationalize over her cries, speaking as gently as I can manage. “We don’t have to pretend anymore.”
Pretty sure she doesn’t even hear me as she’s now attempting to let herself melt into the floor, to cease to exist. But she won’t get away so easily.
For several long minutes, she cries, bleeding her grief out in long, wracking sobs.
“I know.” Her skin is sticky and salty-sweet against my mouth. My tongue traces up her cheek, licking away her tears. I kiss her face after ingesting her despair.
What use is there trying to hold back now?
This is freedom in and of itself, no longer trying to keep up pretense. I steal another press of lips against her cheek. More insistent. And she lets me. Leans into me for the sweetest of moments, the hopeful tree in my chest shivering with life.
Good. This is good. As soon as Delaney can catch her breath, I can explain. I can make her understand it was the only way. And that I will fix it. We will fix it. She just has to let me in.
Even as Delaney folds into what I offer, my affections bring her words back. Defiant and angry through thick hiccups. “Let me go!”
How does she still not understand? How does she not see what this is?
With a disbelieving head shake, I say, “There is no world, no lifetime in which I wouldeverlet you go.”
My nose nuzzles into her flesh. Warm. Soft. She smells like flowers and spring and grey clouds of melancholy that I want to devour. Make them disappear.
My chin tucks over Delaney’s head for emphasis, cradling her like a glass treasure that someone is trying to take away. Hoarding it tight in my clutches but careful it doesn’t break.
“We belong to each other, and we always have. How could we ever be meant for anyone else? Look at what we have already accomplished.” My words are rushed, breathless and tripping over each other.
She squirms, trying to pull her arms free to elbow me, to punch me, to get away or cause harm in whatever way she can.
“There’s no sense fighting it,ocellus,” I croon, kissing her temple and tenderly pinning her arms across herself. If I could just radiate my reasoning from my own soul, settle it into hers.
“You’re insane if you think I’ll ever stay with you!”
“Being in love is its own form of insanity. And it is a madness I will choose until we rot in the ground—together.”
A hand snakes between Delaney’s subdued arms and her chest, her heart jack-rabbiting beneath my palm. If only I could close my fist around it. Hold it against myself.
“You feel it—you feel it right here. We can’t get away from each other. Not really.” I clasp our left hands together, bindingvinculumclinking in the most beautiful, silvery tune. “From the moment we placed these rings on each other’s fingers, distance doesn’t exist for us. Not since we claimed each other as husband and wife. When weingested each other’s blood, sweat, tears, and cum. When I fucked you on the Heartstone andmade you mine.”
She makes another escape attempt, probably thanks to my increasing intensity, and this time I let her go. Delaney sways on unsteady feet. I cuff her elbow, holding her upright.
My gaze turns desperate and pleading. “I had to do it, Delaney. There was no other way.”
Tear stains track down her face; she’s glaring at me; she rips her arm from my grasp. The urge to snag her back into my embrace is painful, all consuming—the moon pulling tides.
“Rainah wasn’t supposed to die,” I more hastily explain, feeling my wife slipping away from me. “I found a letter from the Prime Minister in my father’s chambers. And—and—and everything changed,” I stutter out eloquently.
An opened letter. That he clearly read. And never told me about it.
Ignoring the sense of betrayal that washes over me, nearly as agonizing as my father’s death, I continue, rushed. Like there’s a timestamp on my explanation. “The Prime Minister had in mind to bypass the Astoroth heir and name my father Lord instead—with me as his heir. ThatIwas to marry Rainah: a bride who had been preparing for the role of Lady for ten years.”
I blatantly leave out the even more agonizing betrayal from both my fatherandRainah. Aside from it being quietly discussed that I may have been married to my friend and not the woman I belong to. The betrayal that thoroughly made me break. On top of grief and the pressure of ascending totwohigh positions at once and everyone’s own cataclysmic secrets I had only just learned… I snapped.
Well and truly went mad as a rabid animal.
There’s no point in saying it because, unfortunately, my wife already knows that on a far deeper, more immersive level than I everwould have thought. I never dreamed that Rainah would evershowDelaney the moment that I killed her. But even that small snippet pales in comparison to the way I raged before I confronted Rainah.
