Page 25 of Kiss of Ice

His eyes flickered over her for the briefest of seconds.

“I will expect you to join me for dinner.”

He left, closing the door behind him.

Twelve

He vacillated between triumph and self-loathing. He had done it. He had forced his hated enemy to deliver his only daughter into his hands. Salaq had thought he was getting a seat in the palace, but instead Kam had put a boot to his throat. The Marid would be forced to rein in his ambitions or Morenna – Ren – would suffer.

And that’s where the self-loathing kicked in. He felt sick to his stomach when he remembered the fear in her eyes just now. And before, when he’d blackmailed her into consenting to marriage by threatening her friends. She’d called him a monster. If only she knew how accurate that was.

He’d spent so long as a beast, it had left a mark. Like a long bloodied gouge across the surface of his heart. Before the curse, he’d been carefree and open. The playboy prince, beloved by everyone. Now he plotted revenge and threatened innocent women. What would Nat think of him?

Nat.

He closed his eyes as he traced her features in his mind. Nat, who had ultimately chosen Beast over him. She had been uncompromising in her moral standards. Her entire being was focused on helping others.

No, Nat wouldn’t think very much of him at all right now. In fact, she’d probably be trying to skewer him with one of her damned Cerulean blades to save Ren. Because that’s what Nat did. She saved people from monsters.

He thought back to Ren standing in front of him half-naked and helpless. He’d done it deliberately, to disconcert her. Keep her off-balance and uncertain. But what he hadn’t expected was his own reaction.

She’d reminded him of Nat, in a way. Not in appearance, because they were poles apart. But in the way they both disliked the way they looked.

Nat used her body like a weapon, hurling it into battle again and again. She was strong and agile and supremely confident in her own abilities. But she had hated the scars that disfigured her. She tried to hide them all the time, believing they were ugly and repulsive.

He had loved them, of course, because they were part of her. And he knew the beast did too, because he’dbeenthe beast.

Ren, though. Ren had no scars. Her skin was flawless, untouched by battle or hardships. Yet she too disliked her body. When forced to expose it to his gaze, she had tried to shrink in on herself.

He wondered who had told her she was undesirable. True, he himself tended to select lovers who were slim and lithe. He knew why. He didn’t need a therapist to tell him what he was desperately trying to recapture again and again. If he could bed someone with pink hair, so much the better.

No, Ren was a million miles from the kind of woman he usually found attractive. Too tall, too awkward. And yet as she had stood there with her eyes tight shut, he had found himself getting aroused. He had had to make her put on a robe to snap himself out of it.

Even now, he found himself dwelling on the memory of her nipples outlined under that ridiculous scrap of silk…

“Gods dammit to the seven hells,” he muttered. He had to get a grip.

Ren was not to be thought of as an individual, as someone to be concerned about. She was his leverage over Salaq. His means of revenge. She was a tool, and nothing more.

The lady’s maids were like a flock of colourful birds, all fluttering around Ren. She’d never had this much attention before, and it was a touch overwhelming.

Back home in Valkar, there were many servants. Maids for general housekeeping, grooms for the horses, chefs for the kitchen.

She’d also had a nanny, the kindly Tovah who had looked after her both before and after her mother’s death. Her mother had hired her, in fact, when she’d realised she wasn’t going to survive her long illness. Perhaps she’d known her husband wasn’t capable of showing unreserved affection towards his daughter and had made sure there was someone in her life who could.

But she’d never had an entire team of helpers to call her own.

Right now they had her in the bath, which would have been nice if they hadn’t insisted on kneeling next to it to help her wash. Ren found it excruciatingly embarrassing.

“I can do this myself, you know,” she said, trying not to sound ungrateful. The maid scrubbing her back giggled and carried on regardless.

A second one was filing her fingernails, the third had her foot hoisted out of the bath and was rubbing her heels with exfoliant.

I’m being primped for the Emperor.Though why he’d care about the state of her heels was a mystery.

Ren hunched down in the bath and tried not be bothered by the fact that they were all very pretty. They were Sylvans, as many domestic workers in the employ of the high-born tended to be. Amal had skin the colour of cinnamon. Jaina stood out because of her beautiful almond eyes. And the one with the piercings in her pointed ears was Leshi.

Finding it awkward to have them work on her in silence, Ren cast around for something to say.

---