“I was going to tell you,” I said quietly. “I just—there was never a right time.”
His laugh was sharp and bitter. “Oh, so after we slept together seemed right?”
“No,” I whispered.
He turned away, running a hand down his face like he couldn’t even look at me.
“You let me think—Ancestors, Maple, we welcomed you into our home. Mymotherwelcomed you. And all this time, you were lying?”
“I wasn’t lying!” I stood, wobbling slightly, heart in my throat. “I was trying to survive. You don’t know what it’s like—to be born to power and have none of it. To be treated like a shadow in your own family. My father said some covens might see me as weak. As a threat. That… that they might try to kill me.”
“And he was right,” Rune said, turning back to me, eyes stormy. “Do you know what it means to bring anullinto our coven during a magical collapse? Do you know what that will do to the witches here if they find out? Do you know what this could do to me? My own wife a null?”
“I’m not a curse,” I said, even though it felt like I was.
He stared at me for a long time—so long I thought maybe he would leave, slam the door, let the weight of what we’d just done rot between us.
But then he took a slow step forward.
“You should have told me.”
“I know,” I whispered as my heart shattered within my chest.
“I don’t know what to do now, but I need to think.” And with that, he was gone, and I was left in his room to think about everything we’d said.
My eyebrows pulled together. Wait.
I straightened as I pulled my dress up around my body and rushed to the door.
Wife.He’d called me his wife.
He hadn’t said “you ruined everything.”
He hadn’t said “I want you gone.”
He hadn’t said “stranger” or “liar.”
He’d saidmy wife.
My hands trembled as I reached for the chair, sinking into it with my dress bunched at my hips and shame pooling in my stomach.
The longer Isat with my thoughts, the angrier I became. He wanted me to be completely honest with him? He wanted me to give away my darkest, deepest secret? He wanted me to doallof this to get to him, to helphispeople, and yet… He had lied to me. Not only had he lied to me, but he had also kept me at arm’s length until he wanted my body.
We were obviously married, so the physical aspect of it all wasn’t truly a complication… But the fact that we were married and he hadn’t told me. He expected transparency and honesty fromme?
My hands shook as I huffed out a laugh. I’d cried off all of my makeup as I waited for Rune to come back to his own room, but he never did. I sat waiting like a desperate idiot. And of course, the longer I waited, the more I was able to think rationally outside of the haze of lust and confusion.
If anyone should be mad, it’s me. I pressed my hands into my face and shook my head. If anyone should be trying to figure out what to do next, it should be me.
He was the Voodoo King, sure. But I was apparently his wife, and that meant something. It had to mean something, and he’d kept it from me. Which only led to more questions.
I splashed water on my face and shook my head as I stared at my puffy, swollen eyes in the mirror. I was tired of waiting. If he wanted to talk and figure this out together, he would have to come find me. I wasn’t going to be the one waiting around for him anymore. I’d done enough of that.
I straightened my shoulders and prayed to whoever was listening that no one would be lurking in the halls at this hour and snuck out of his room. I held my heels in one hand as I raced down the hallways looking for Adelle’s rooms.
A deep breath escaped me as I noticed her door ajar. She was probably awake or drunk. I could deal with either. I was just about to burst through her door and lay it all out at her feet when I heard Rune’s voice.
“You don’t get it!” He was angry this time. I shrunk back from the opening, but kept listening.
