Page 13 of Rhapsody of Ruin
I lay there a little longer than I meant to. Then I remembered the thousand eyes and the wagers, the way Sylara’s fan had stilled when our hands touched in the ceremony. Our chamber might have felt like a world apart, but nothing in Shadowspire stayed private for long.
I slid from the bed. The silk cool against my skin felt like waking from a fever. Rhydor sat up on his elbows, watching.
“You’re leaving.” Not a question.
“Yes.” I fastened the first clasp of my gown and met his eyes. “Because I choose to.”
For a heartbeat I thought he would argue. That the dragon in him would growl and pull me back down and make this a new kind of cage. He didn’t. He only watched me with that steady, storm-dark gaze and nodded once, and something inside me that had been braced for a blow unwound by a breath.
At the door, I paused. “I won’t be disposable,” I said again, because saying it once had not undone the years of silence that taught me otherwise.
His mouth curved, not quite a smile, not quite a wound. “Not possible,” he said. The words were raw enough that they might have been a mistake. “Not after this.”
I slipped into the corridor before either of us could ruin it with more truth.
The guards kept their faces forward as I passed. Their eyes flicked, quick as knife points, and then went still again. The hall smelled of cool stone and silver smoke, the ward-flames throwing faint shadows that fluttered like wings. Far off, music lilted in a minor key. Whisperers would already be at work. By morning, the court would know more than I wanted them to.
Let them. The board had shifted. The first piece had moved because I put my hand on it.
As I turned the last corner toward my own rooms, I felt the pulse of the wards change, the castle drawing breath in a new rhythm. I pressed my hand to the nearest stone and felt it answering me like a heartbeat.
Let them try to use this against me. Let them try to call me soft again.
They would learn softness could drown.
I closed my door and leaned my forehead against the wood for one heartbeat, then two. In the quiet that followed, the memory of his hands returned like heat.
I let myself feel it, just for that breath. Then I straightened and reached for the bell pull to summon Nyssa. I would need fresh water and a quiet dawn. I would need a mask that fit like a weapon.
By the time the first courtier whispered the word consummated with a smile that thought it could cut, I would already have a sharper blade waiting.
And if the dragon prince thought he had taken me and now owned me, he would learn I owned myself, and this marriage would belong to the one who knew how to wield it.
I was not disposable.
Tomorrow, I would prove it again.
Chapter 9
Rhydor
The room still smelled like her. Not the cloying sweetness they pipe through these halls to drown good sense. Her. Moon-bloom and something sharper I couldn’t name, something that tasted like the moment before a strike when the world narrows to the line of a blade.
I lay on my back a long time after the door shut, watching the false stars crawl their cold routes across the ceiling, listening to the echo of her breath fade from the stone. Heat throbbed in my blood like an aftershock. I had not lost my mind in a bed since I was very young and very stupid. Tonight I had come close.
I told myself it was the ritual, the surge that leapt at first touch in the hall, sparks bright enough to make the court gasp. I told myself it was the damned glamour that slicked these walls and got into a man’s lungs until he mistook hunger for need.
The lies tasted thin.
I sat up and dragged a hand over my face. The sheet fell, cool against skin that still remembered the heat of her. The muscle along my jaw ached from clenching too long. My pride ached worse.
I should have sent her away when she walked in with that mask of serenity and that mouth set like a line I wanted to cross. I should have demanded the truth of her, about what game her court was playing, about whether this marriage had always been a cage with a prettier lock.
Instead, when she said no masks, I believed her. Instead, when she touched me without pushing that heavy sweet magic into my lungs, I answered like a man who had been starved and trusted the bread.
I laughed once, low in my throat. A sorry sound.
Armor lay where I’d thrown it, a slope of dull steel against the chair. My crest glinted where I had set it on the table before the ceremony and refused to let the guards drag it from me. I crossed to it and set a hand on it and breathed until the heat in me settled into something steadier. I would need that steadiness in the morning. The court would have heard already. They were probably listening at the keyholes while I stood there with my hand over my blood and my pride stitched back into place.
