Page 37 of A Queen Of Broken Realms
I try harder to wrestle my emotions, now that my lungs aren’t raging and my heart isn’t so deafening. I just need to think about other things, like the fucking vat of fangria I’m going to bathe in with a straw as soon as I get out of this goddamn room. You know, since fangria has worked out so well for me in the Shadow Realm before. Maybe I’ll just go right ahead and add a few bottles of Rakomelo in there while I’m at it.Christ.
Ediye’s sage words come back to me as they always do when shit is hitting the fan with this demon.
You are so fucked, vampire.
Ashen rolls me onto my back. He hovers over my body, his weight balanced on his forearms. The scent of ink comes alive with his heat and sweat as he grazes his tattooed knuckles down my cheek. And those cognac eyes, they miss nothing. They burrow beneath my skin. Into my soul. They parse out the pieces of me, dismantling my emotions until the kernels of truth are all that’s left behind.
“You are nervous,” Ashen says as his fingers follow my pulse. I draw his hand away, but gently, and his eyes narrow a little.
“This is the Shadow Realm. I’m always nervous.”
“And hurt.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Fuck off.”
Ashen gives me a fleeting smile. “So stubborn.” The smile evaporates, his scrutiny crystallizing in his eyes. And then his expression clears, like sunlight has burned away the mist. “You were serious.”
I scoff. “About what?”
“Choice. Me. Me choosing you.”
I roll my eyes and level him with a glare. “No.”
“Yes. I hurt you.”
Some kind of brick has lodged itself into my throat. Swallowing does nothing to dislodge it. “No, you didn’t.”
“Liar.”
My nostrils flare with irritation. My eyes brighten with red light, illuminating Ashen’s skin in a crimson glow. “When did you become so annoying? I mean, more than usual.”
“About the same time you became more stubborn than usual.” The amusement in Ashen’s voice is a thin veil for his worry. Disappointment, too. In himself, I think.
I feel like I can’t tell him how hung up I am on this marriage thing, because even though my heart wants it, my brain still screams that it’s trite. But I can work my way closer. I can tell him another honest, vulnerable worry that bears down on me. Its weight is so heavy that it presses tears to the edges of my eyes. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve been alone for a really long time, Ashen. My memory isn’t enough to tell me what I should do. Maybe I never really knew. And everything is a bit ass-backwards. We’re mated but it’s not like we’ve ever even been on a date. Like, going out and doing something fun.”
Ashen gives a reassuring smile that only makes the cracks in my heart split a little deeper. “Killing werewolves was fun.”
I roll my eyes. “I mean getting to know one another when there’s no adrenaline or secrets or battles.Normal peoplefun stuff.”
Ashen gives me a flat, doubtful look. “You called Scrabble with that human detectivefun? He was courting you with board games and a rubber plant.”
“Japanese peace lily.”
“Whatever. My point is, we are not ‘normal people’, we are immortals.”
“Even immortals fumble through living. And I feel out of my depth.”
Ashen looks at me for a long moment, shifting one sweaty strand of hair after another from my skin until all my face is bare of obstructions. “I do too. But I knowyou. Here,” Ashen says, touching my mark.
“I bet here too,” I reply, touching his forehead. “I bet you looked me up in your haunted library.”
Ashen shakes his head. I give him a skeptical look. “No, really. I did not look you up. Aglaope and Molpe, yes. Not you.”
“I don’t know whether to be envious or bummed. You wouldn’t old-school,unsocial media stalk me, but you stalked my sisters? Jeez.”
