Page 72 of Fake Fae-Ancée

"You shouldn’t even be here…"

I put the nib down. Or tried to. My hand hovered over the paper for at least two minutes before I realized with slight horror that I couldn’t do this.

I couldn’t sign.

Something within me, something old and silent, something I had stowed away deep inside my mind, grabbed me. And held my hand back.

The pen fell from my fingers, blotting the table with ink. I shot to my feet. Chest heaving, I glared at Bates. The butler regarded me expressionless.

"Very well, milady."

With a slight nod, as if he perfectly understood what had just happened, he smoothly gathered the papers before the spilled ink could stain them. He mopped up the ink with a handkerchief, then gave me another of his slight bows and marched off.

Leaving me alone with my swirling thoughts.

I stared at my hands. Then at the empty spot at the table where my unsigned divorce papers had been seconds ago.

Yuri

Sleep would not come.After tossing and turning for an hour, then two, I got up, got dressed, and left my bedroom. I obviously needed to smash something before the wild, angry thing inside me would find any peace.

I walked through my large, dark penthouse, the floor cold beneath my bare feet. The space around me seemed larger than usual, emptier.

Colder.

So that's what it felt like…

I had signed the papers. I could have just as well cut off my own arm. But she had insisted. She didn't want to be my wife anymore. For years now. I had finally done the inevitable.

After all these years, I still couldn't refuse her anything.

Not even that.

Even if it ripped my heart out.

Thumping sounds had my ears perking up. They came from the direction in which I was heading. Dull thumps, like hammer blows against a pillow.

The lights were on in the training room. In the open space behind the equipment — the weight benches, the horizontal bar, my punching bag — Kai was beating a dummy to a pulp with a wooden sword.

I stopped and watched. Frozen, as if someone had put a spell on me.

Drills like that had been common in the EDF. And I knew they were standard protocol for P.A.S.H. agents as well, to be performed several times a week. The dummy stood no chance. Even without her powers, Kai was a paragon of technique and grace. Or would have been, if she hadn't been so angry. The blows she rained down on the dummy were skillful but sloppy. One or two even missed.

Just then she lashed out, the sword slicing an elegant arc through the air and crashing against the dummy's throat. A real blade would have sent its head flying through the air.

I gulped.

Kai finished her series of blows and lowered her sword. Breathing heavily, she put one arm on her hip and stretched her neck.

I must have made a noise, probably breathing too loud after all, because she wheeled around, snatched up the wooden sword, falling back into attack stance.

"Oh," she uttered when she recognized me. "It’s you."

"Yeah, I do live here, you know," I said in a low voice.

She drew her brows together and lowered the sword just slightly.

"Yes..." she said, voice breaking a little, and she cleared her throat. "I do know."

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