Olivian dripped wax onto my letter and stamped it with Oceansgate’s seal. “It’ll take a month for this letter to reach the king. Then another for the annulment certificate to arrive back here. Once it does, you and Kyven will sign it, and Amryssa will marry him, as planned.”
“And then I’ll kill him?”
“Yes.”
A small, sad smile etched itself on my face. “Because all the king wants is a convenient death for his son, in some faraway backwater where no one will look too closely?”
“Precisely,” Olivian said. “At which point Amryssa will be a widowed princess, in need of care.”
I huffed out a dead laugh. Dear goddess, I’d come so perilously close to breaking this. I’d nearly let Kyven make me his wife in full. I’dwantedto.
Clearly, something was deeply, deeply wrong with me. Merron was lucky I’d cut him loose.
“You might be given a life sentence,” Olivian said. “I’ll do what I can to avoid that outcome, but I have very little influence.”
“I’d appreciate you trying.”
He nodded, businesslike. “While we wait for the annulment, I want you by Kyven’s side at all times. Don’t let him near Amryssa. Or any other woman in this house, for that matter.”
Bitterness flooded my tongue. “You mean...you want me to babysit him?”
“Yes.”
“What about at night?”
“Especially then. He can’t be permitted to go prowling the halls. You’ll have to keep him in your room.”
“Oh, great.” A laugh scraped up my throat, but I’d dug this hole myself. Now I would have to dig myself out.
“Andtrynot to kill him. Not yet. If he makes an attempt on you, you’ll have to deflect it without slitting his throat.”
I grumbled. “Now you’re just taking the fun out of it.”
His gaze thinned.
I raised open palms. “Sorry, sorry. Just kidding. Sort of.”
“Hilarious,” Olivian said stonily. “And do not, under any circumstances, consummate this marriage. If you do, the annulment will be out of reach forever.”
The memory of Kyven’s tongue stirred a crackling heat inside me, but I shoved the feeling down into the darkest parts of myself. Of which there were plenty, apparently. “Come on. Do you really think I’d stoop so low?”
“You’re young. Which is synonymous with idiotic. And Kyven’s pretty. Prettier than Merron, at least. Even I can see that much.”
Blood crept into my cheeks. I hadn’t realized Olivian knew about my dalliances with the steward, but apparently I’d misjudged a whole fuck of a lot. “I’m twenty-seven, not a teenager. I can control my baser urges, thanks. Not that they were ever that depraved to begin with.”
“Good.” Olivian’s attention slid to the corner. He startled, so subtly that I almost missed it, but then that look crept over him again. Haunted. Hunted.
With our typical animosity stripped away, I found the courage to finally ask.
“What’re you looking at?” I said. “When you do that. Who is it you’re seeing?”
Olivian’s jaw flexed. For a moment, I thought he wouldn’t answer, but he grunted and said, “My wife.”
My eyebrows rose. “Amryssa’s mother, you mean?”
He looked away. Not toward the corner again, just...not at me.
“You can see her even though she’s gone?” I pressed.
