Oh, thank Zephyrine.
My stomach settled into its rightful place. My lungs lightened with sweet, sweet air. I gasped, then gasped some more, until the fuzzy shadows lining my vision faded.
By the time Kyven emerged from the bathroom, I’d mostly recovered. I lay on the bed in my nightgown, another aching smile pasted to my face. The dagger rested beneath my pillow, awaiting its moment.
Kyven stopped at the foot of the bed. He’d stripped to his shirtsleeves and breeches. His hair had been wetted and combed back, freeing the planes of his face to glint in the candlelight.
I stared. My pulse throbbed in my throat, so thick and forceful I lost my breath all over again. Maybe because it finally sank in that I’d married this man, or maybe because, without all that wedding finery, I could trace my new husband’s body right through his clothes. Broad shoulders tapered to a rangy waist while muscle cabled his arms and thighs. Despite his middling height, he radiated strength, but it was the hardened, hungry kind, the sort earned by days of hard labor that ended with too little on the table. Where he’d looked so refined in his formalwear, now the low light revealed a wild, starving edge. Prince or not, he looked nothing like a man who lounged around in gentleman’s clubs and made polite noises over fine china.
Was this his predator’s hunger shining through, then? Did the perverse appetites boiling inside him carve his body to hardness? Strip away the excesses of princehood?
“That bathroom has more mirrors than a carnival house,” he said, breaking the grip of my thoughts. “I was beginning to think I’d never find my way out.”
A grunt escaped me. I hadn’t expectedthat.
But he wasn’t wrong. Before this had been my chamber, it had been Eliana’s, and the woman had apparently required thirty-six different viewing angles when choosing her wardrobe. Upon moving in, I’d left her mirror collection untouched, with the vague intention of finding out what Merron looked like from every perspective when he hoisted me onto the counter and ravished me.
Not that it would ever happen now, and not that Kyven needed to know that. “Are you sure you weren’t getting lost in your own reflection?”
At my jibe, an appreciative spark flared in his eyes. “Tempting as that was, my wife was waiting for me. And I’m far more interested in admiring her than myself.”
Wife.My breath hitched, but he said no more, only began a slow perusal of the room. At my vanity, he lifted a long-dry perfume bottle and sniffed at the nozzle with the entitled air of a man handling his own possessions. By the window, he ran a forefinger along the sill and inspected it for dust, then directed his attention outside.
He studied the forest’s spectral purple glow, his face inscrutable.
I lay there, tension vibrating through me. What was he doing? Why this studied inventory of my life?
“This place is lavish,” he murmured. “You’re fortunate. Though I suppose you’d have no way to know that.”
I frowned. Iwasfortunate, and absolutely knew it, but any prince of Hightower should see a long-faded bloom, a house whose glory days were so far past they’d flaked away to dust and collected beneath the baseboards.
Why did nothing about this man line up with expectations? Even Eliana’s letter hadn’t prepared me for...this.
Kyven took a seat on the empty side of the bed. He plucked a book from my nightstand and leafed through the pages, then swiveled to face me, brow raised.
“A romance?” His tone struck a balance between teasing and surprise. “You? I wouldn’t have guessed.”
I searched for my voice. “Why? Do I not seem like a reader?”
“Oh, I’d never cast doubts on your intellect. I just hadn’t taken you for the love story type. You seem too...fiery for that.”
My head spun. Now we were talking about...my reading habits?
“Lunk will like you, at any rate,” he said.
“Lunk,” I repeated dumbly.
“Mmm-hmm. He adores romances. Is this one any good? You’ll have to recommend it to him, if so.”
“Because Lunk...reads romances?”
“Oh, yes. Endlessly. He’ll bend your ear in half, if you aren’t careful.” He made an elegant gesture in the air. “He’s constantly trying to relate the plotline of his latest obsession to me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to remind him I prefer tolivemy love stories.”
I couldn’t help it—I scoffed.
“What?” Kyven looked at me askance. “I don’t seem like a man who falls in love?”
I nearly bit through my tongue trying to keep from answeringthatquestion.
