Page 46 of Tarnished Queen

“You,” I hiss. I’m too tired to make it sound really vicious the way I’d like to.

He looks over at me, one eyebrow arched lazily. For the first time, I notice the shallow glass in his grip. The amber liquid in it sloshes as he turns to me. “Did you two ladies cry it out and make friends again?”

My face does feel puffy. Anytime I cry, my eyes turn red and my skin goes blotchy for hours afterward. I swipe at my eyes. “These are happy tears, you asshole. Because, despite the damage you caused, I managed to fix things with my sister.”

Nikolai sits up, as unbothered as ever. “Great. So you’ll be good to go to the seamstress with me tomorrow.”

Of all the things I expected him to say, that wasn’t one of them. It takes me a few seconds to even process what he said. “You want to go to a… a seamstress?”

“‘Want’ is a strong word. But you’re going to wear a wedding dress to our wedding, so there isn’t much choice.”

I blink at him. “Are you serious right now?”

“Does it seem like a joke?” he asks. “Because it wouldn’t be very funny.”

Nikolai is relaxed in a way I’ve never seen before. The alcohol seems to have taken the sharp edge off of his anger. It should make me feel better, but instead, I’m nervous.

I prefer the devil I know over the devil I don’t.

“You actually think I’m going through with this wedding? After you gave me that piss-poor excuse for a proposal and then traumatized my sister by dumping all of our baggage on her without warning?”

He snorts. “She’s fine.”

“Don’t tell me she’s fine when you don’t even know her.”

His glazed eyes narrow. “I know you, Belle Dowan. And if your sister wasn’t fine, you’d still be in there talking to her.”

Okay, I have to give him that one. He’s right.

But that doesn’t change anything. If anything, it makes everything worse.

“Maybe she is fine,” I admit. “But I’m not.”

“Do we need couples counseling before we’re even a couple?” he asks in a mocking voice.

“You say that as if we aren’t two of the most screwed-up people on the planet. Considering you’re trying to force me into this marriage, yeah, I’d say we are in need of some counseling at the very least.”

“Well,” he muses, “by the time we do the dress, the catering, the ice sculptures, the fire-eaters, and the honeymoon, I’m afraid we won’t have time for therapy.”

He’s teasing me. Toying with me. Refusing to rise to my level of anger.

And it’s driving me crazy.

Which must be the reason I cross the room in a fury and slap his drink out of his hand. “I’m being serious, Nikolai! Stop being an asshole and talk to—”

Suddenly, Nikolai lunges to his feet, grabs my wrist, and spins me around. He presses me into the mattress and hovers over me, his knee wedged between my legs. It all happens in the span of time between one blink and the next.

“You lost the chance to collaborate with me,” he snarls softly in my face, his breath rich with whiskey. “I took care of you and your sister at every turn, and you betrayed me. You chose to work with my enemy. You chose to willingly run into the arms of someone who wanted both of us dead.”

“But I didn’t know—”

“Exactly,” he interrupts. “You didn’t know, Belle. You don’t know anything. You don’t know what my world is like, you don’t know what I’m capable of, and you damn sure don’t know what kind of dangers are waiting for you out there. You don’t know a fucking thing.”

With every word out of his mouth, my anger drains out of me. He’s angry, but beneath it is a thread of sincerity I’ve never heard from him before. A choked tension I’ve rarely seen.

I’m not sure what to make of it.

“When you have the freedom to choose for yourself, you choose wrong, time and time again. You go off and nearly get yourself—” He blows out a frustrated breath. “So you don’t get a choice in this. We are getting married.”

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