Page 81 of The Curse of a Kingdom
His warm hand wrapped around her stomach, bringing her flush to his body, his lips tracing the skin of her back. The intense heat from last night was mostly gone, but his lips were getting her there once again. “I haven’t looked at a woman the way I see you ever since—” His words got lost somewhere, and she turned to meet his distant gaze.
“Ever since . . . ?”
“I can’t remember. The memory evades me.” Arkimedes frowned. “But even if I did, I'm not sure if I have ever felt this way before.”
She grinned, and hope bloomed in her chest. It had taken him much longer to admit his feelings for her a year ago. However small, this progress was good. Maybe the idea of waiting for him to fall for her wasn’t as ridiculous as she’d thought. “You will get your memories back,” she said. Devon thought so.
However, there was a possibility that he would never remember the last decade of his life. Much like she would never remember her father again.
They both stared at each other in a heartbreaking silence, and Nava couldn’t handle that pain in his features a moment longer. She cleared her throat. “Has she seen you without clothes?”
A shocked roll of laughter came out of him. “No, bee, she has not.” His expression softened.
There it was again, her nickname.
With the light of the early morning flooding the room, she allowed herself to relax in his embrace. It had been a little over a week in her time since he was taken, but it had been much longer for him.
She lay down, facing the canopy above her, closing her eyes as her mind reeled. Unable to imagine the confusion he must have felt from being apart from her, not knowing what was happening.
Even knowing he was taken, she had been perplexed as to why her health had faded in a matter of hours. It made sense now with the time difference between the kingdoms. Maybe her soul had always known they’d been apart for longer than well.
His touch raised goose bumps as he trailed his hand from her shoulder, making a path to her heart.
“What’s this?” His whole body tensed as he stared at her chest, his calloused finger tracing the raised edges of her soulmate mark. The warmth in her body drained away, replaced by the icy caress of panic. Her scalp crawled and she put both her hands on top of his. He pulled out of her grasp as if she had burned him and sat straight in the bed, his eyes widening, his face losing all color. “Is this some sort of trick?”
“No, no.” She sprang up, reaching for him.
“You’d better start talking, and I hope this is not what I think it is.”
Nava sat straight and fought the urge to fidget under his scrutiny. She covered her chest, and the taste of guilt was bitter. “I wasn’t sure when to tell you.”
He hissed out a breath, and in a blink, he was standing by the side of the bed, his wings spreading as his eyes took her in. “You had plenty of time yesterday when I was asking you if we were married.”
“I didn’t lie. We aren’t married—and I didn’t want to divulge our information in the middle of the garden.”
He leveled her with a look that made her shut her mouth. “You were diverting about you being the future queen. You know well a soulmate overwrites any marriage in the eyes of our gods.”
“I don’t want to be the queen.”
“Don’t change the subject,” he growled.
“You changed the subject, not me!”
This was the most ironic thing she’d ever thought could happen to her, the complete mirror image to what had happened almost a year ago when their situations had been reversed. After all, Arkimedes had hidden that he was her soulmate for almost a month before the truth had come out, thanks to Violet outing him as a member of the Society of Crows.
“I wanted to tell you ever since I first stepped foot here! It was hard with you not remembering even meeting me. You thought I had bewitched you, Arkimedes,” she rushed to say.
He walked around the bed, picking up his discarded pants from the night before. “That is not an excuse.”
“I tried to tell you yesterday . . . for a moment.” But Nava knew she hadn’t tried, not really. She crossed her arms over her chest, her blood boiling. “You don’t get to be mad at me for this.”
“What?”
“You did the same thing to me last year and—”
Arkimedes's lips parted before his aura exploded around him, black and sinister like fingers and arms emanating from his body. “I don’t know what the hell you are talking about, Nava! I don’t remember anything of what you are telling me. I’m trying hard to trust you, but how can I when you are lying to me about no less than being my soulmate!”
The temperature of the room lowered, and Nava pushed back against the headboard, her heart hammering. “I was waiting for you to trust me before I dropped the soul bomb,” she blurted. “I was waiting for the right moment.”
