“Okay, one, I’m not crying, and two, I don’t talk about feelings, remember?”
I expected him to smile, but the light in his face dimmed. “Don’t do that. Don’t hide from me.”
“Why not?” I scoffed. “It’s over. I’m not your wife anymore. An hour from now, you’ll be married to Amryssa.”
He studied me for long moments. “You think you’re not my wife?”
“IknowI’m not. We signed the annulment, didn’t we? Before all this.”
His face went carefully blank. He eased out of me, then crawled off the mattress and gazed down. He was a heavenly mess, rumpled and sticky and crisscrossed by scratches, only half of which I could claim responsibility for, the other half having resulted from his efforts with the lawn.
The bite marks, though...those were all mine.
“Don’t be angry.” Kai ducked into the bathroom and returned with the annulment certificate. He held it out.
My pulse stopped, then restarted, double-time. I stared at the offering, then up into his face.
“It wouldn’t have mattered, anyway,” he said, neutral. “It isn’t my name on here.”
I nodded, not daring to form an opinion on what that meant, and took the paper. When I didn’t unfold it right away, he said, “I’ll go clean up.”
Good. Yes. That was easier. I didn’t want him to see my reaction. “Okay.”
He retreated. When the bathroom door clicked, I swallowed my jangling nerves and opened the annulment certificate. And found...nothing. Just a blank, waiting line where his signature should have been. Or Kyven’s, rather.
I couldn’t help myself. A choking sob rushed up my throat. The ache between my legs intensified, proof that no matter where he went or who he pretended to marry, I would be his wife. Even if no one realized it.
I yielded to a bewildering crush of emotion and wept.
But only for a minute. By the time Kai emerged from the bathroom, I’d dried my cheeks, though the wariness in his face told me redness still rimmed my eyes.
“You’re angry at me,” he said.
“No.” I waved the paper. “But you do need to sign this now.”
He hesitated. “I will, but it means nothing. It annuls a marriage that never took place. It has no effect on ours.”
“I realize that. But nobody else does, so you have to pretend to be Kyven, still. You have to marry Amryssa and walk off into a nightmare. Then I’ll declare you dead and take her to Hightower and... Everyone’ll get what they want. Even Vick. He can go play bandit chief to his heart’s content.”
Kai stared at me as if searching for the lie in my words.
I lifted my chin and let him. He could look as deeply as he liked—there was nothing to find.
“That’s still what you want?” he finally said. “Even after all that?”
“It’ll always be what I want. Amryssa needs to go somewhere Zephyrine can’t reach her. And you need to go to Fairmont. Visit your last territory. Collect your last accent. You know, experience everything.”
“And then...what?” He shifted his weight. “Just never see my wife again?”
And there it was. The question that made my insides ice over. I was a frozen tundra, a blank white space awaiting the inscription of an answer.
Except Iknewthe answer, because it didn’t matter whether I wanted him, or if he wanted me. My duty was to Amryssa, first and foremost. Not to Kai, or even myself.
“Who knows?” I said, trying for levity. “Maybe we’ll run into each other again someday. Maybe when we’re eighty.”
His eyes darkened. “What if I don’t want to?”
I recoiled, more stung than I had any right to be. “Well, that’s rude. I mean, it’s one thing to think it, but you don’t have to say so.”
