“Mmm.” He nuzzled against me, one arm still beneath my head. “Probably because you hate me.”
“I really, really do.” A feverish sound escaped when he nestled my hips into the crook of his. “I hate you more than I’ve ever hated anyone, anywhere, in all the world, throughout the entire history of time.”
He laughed, his breath tickling my nape. “Lucky for you, that doesn’t bother me in the slightest.”
“It should.”
“It doesn’t. I’ll still worship you all night, when you finally let me.”
A full-body, molten shiver claimed me. “IfI let you.”
“No,” he purred in my ear. “When.”
I lay there, humming inside, quietly exploding, torn between turning over so I could beg him to do exactly that, and thanking him for distracting me from the horrors of the diary.
“And lioness?” he murmured.
“Yes?” I sounded squeaky. Like a shrunken mouse.
“I can’t wait. I really, truly cannotwait.”
I wasn’t sure I could, either. Volcanic need laced my veins, a thousand fiery rivers all leading to him. But before I could gather the resolve to turn over, his breathing lengthened.
I laughed, a silent hitch I kept buried in my chest. Was this damnable prince serious? He’d just threatened to fuck me stupid, then promptly fallen asleep, draped around me like a scorching, muscled blanket.
Ass. Infuriating, tantalizing, exasperating man.
I lay there, unable to imagine spending a night glued together like this, not in this heat. But I didn’t want to wake him, so I closed my eyes and tried to drift off.
To my surprise, sleep came on like a lullaby. And it lasted, a rest more restorative than any I’d had in weeks.
22.
Of course, tranquility didn’t last beyond the point at which I opened my eyes.
I rolled from bed while Ky still slept, then spent the day mired in dread. The idea of telling Amryssa the truth tied me in knots, because what if she left me?
But I couldn’t bear to lie to her.
I dropped the brush while combing her hair. Twice. Then misaligned her corset and had to re-lace the entire thing. At breakfast, I overfilled her cupandthe saucer that caught the runoff, then took her back upstairs to exchange her dress for one that didn’t have tea dribbled all over the skirts.
All the while, knowledge pulsed inside me like a poisoned heartbeat.
Amryssa was Zephyrine’s. And the goddess wanted her back.
By afternoon, my head throbbed, to say nothing of my heart. Up in the cupola, Amryssa read a book while I sweated over the mending. Ky had busied himself in the yard below, lashing together a frame for some leggy tomato plants.
All the energy he’d accumulated during our weeks-long search of the library seemed to be pouring from him at once. Once he finished with the tomatoes, he weeded the entire vegetable garden, then jogged over to the wood-chopping stump. The thing saw frequent use, given how much fuel the hot water boilers consumed, and we also had an unending supply of diseased purple wood to dispose of. Not to mention an axe-wielding prince who apparently had more drive than he knew what to do with.
An exquisitely tempting prince, at that.
I wrenched my gaze away from all those sweat-slicked muscles. Four more days. Then the annulment certificate would arrive, and Ky would cease to be my problem. He wouldn’t be anyone’s problem but his own.
At dinner, Amryssa listlessly pushed bits of trout around her plate. Olivian chewed in silence. Ky sat opposite me, his so-called attendants stationed behind him. Vick glared at the back of Ky’s head as if he could drill a hole into it.
A bite of fish scraped down my throat, but dinner didn’t interest me any more than it did Amryssa. I forked a green bean and dropped it again. What the hell was I going to tell her? What if she refused to go to Hightower, once she knew?
The kitchen door opened.
