“You think … You think I want tohurtyou? Or that Ithinkabout that?” Nikator’s voice lashed out angrily and so incredulously that it made her pause and glance over at him. He wore that expression again—disgust. Like she had suggested something absolutely revolting. Something so out of the realm of normal that he had to break away from his normal stoic expression or scowls.
Biyu lowered the bejeweled comb, the sunlight glinting off the purple stones embedded on the spine of it. Her chest constricted at the look he gave her. Disbelief, maybe? She couldn’t understand why. “You’re … a monster,” she finally said when she couldn’t bear the loud silence between them. “Why wouldn’t I think that of you?”
He looked like she had slapped him. He reeled back, blinking, and then he scoffed. “Are you fucking kidding me? You blasted me with a spell, sliced my arms to ribbons, and you bound me to a cursed bond with you, and notoncehave I retaliated.”
“Just because you’re not abusing me right now doesn’t mean you wouldn’t do it later.” Biyu didn’t understand the heat in his words, nor his sudden rage. He was a trained killer and they both had history with one another—a very unpleasant one. “You know what you’ve done in the past! Just look at the way you carved up those guards not even that long ago! You tortured them, brutalized their corpses, and displayed your violence for everyone to see. Someone who’s capable of that is more than capable of hurting me, or wanting to hurt me.”
“Let me make this very clear, since you don’t seem to understand”— she could tell he tried to keep his voice flat and neutral; it was belied by something darker, something that just barely peeked out from his carefully selected words. Like he was trying not to terrify her, but was failing. “When I dream of you, Idon’t think about hurting you, Princess Biyu. And when I’m with you, not once have I wanted to hurt you.”
An unexpected warmth bloomed in her chest, but she tamped it down. She didn’t want any more confusion, and she certainly didn’t want to think anything positive about him. He was still a monster. A horrible, cruel beast who would lie if he needed to.
“What about when you put your dagger to my throat? I bled a little bit! Are you telling me you didn’t mean to do that?”
“I was trying to get you to stop doing whatever you were planning,” he snapped. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“But you did!”
“I di?—”
“I can’t trust anything you say to me when you pin me against the wall and put a knife to my throat. You want me to fear you. I see it in the way you look at me! It’s not a stretch to say you want to hurt me?—”
“I don’t want to hurt you!” he snarled, his hands fisting together. “Why the hell would I want that?”
Biyu clenched the comb tight enough that her hand turned bloodless and pale. She jerked up to her feet and nearly slammed her knees against the edge of the vanity on her way up. “Because you think I’m a traitor and that I’m planning something nefarious. That’s why you want to hurt me! And I’m sure if we weren’t bound together now, you would have killed me yesterday!”
“I wouldn’t … I wouldn’t kill you.” His voice lowered, softened, and she knew if she took that as a sign of weakness, he would snap her up cruelly. Because it wasn’t weakness; it was something far more terrifying than if he had shouted. There was a ferocity in his voice, in his expression, that chilled her down to her being. “I would never want to hurt you, or kill you, princess.And I’m warning you to not put me in a position where I might have to do either.”
Biyu flinched back and nearly dropped her comb. He made his point very clear—he didn’t want to hurt her, but he would if he had to. He didn’t want to kill her, but if she proved herself to be a traitor, then he would do what needed to be done.
Whatever attraction and desire she felt in that moment vanished. She turned herself away from him and sat back on her bench. Her hands shook the entire time as she brushed out her hair. The silence was nearly deafening and she couldn’t bear to meet his gaze for fear of what she would find. He had already made himself clear and she couldn’t forget their positions in all of this, couldn’t get caught up in a moment of weakness.
He was loyal to Drakkon Muyang.
She was plotting against him.
Biyu repeated the lines in her head over and over as she carefully tied her hair back. She had to redo it three times, her hands shaking so badly she couldn’t get a good grip with the hairpin. By the fourth time, the low bun was lopsided and not nearly as neat as Lin would have done it, but it was best she could do at the moment, so she chose to focus on picking her jewelry instead. It was the only thing she could fiddle with before having to face him again, and she didn’t want to do that.
She had selected a gold hairpin with violet flowers dangling off thin chains on the end of it, so to match that, she chose a set of earrings and a necklace with lilac-colored gems. It was perhaps a bit too much purple, but it was her favorite color, so she figured it would be fine. It wasn’t like anyone would care about what she wore.
Nikator’s stare burned the back of her head and she resisted the urge to peek at him. She normally would have been done at just that—clothes, hair, and something perfumed—but she picked up the small silver box containing reddish powder. Itwouldn’t hurt to do makeup, would it? She wasn’t skilled in it, usually opting to let the maidservants do it—since Lin’s hands had grown shaky with age and she sometimes couldn’t draw ornamental designs on her forehead, or anything that needed too much precision.
Before she could begin experimenting, Nikator said, “Are you ready yet? We’ll be leaving shortly.”
Biyu reached for a thin angled brush. “Leaving where?”
“To the gardens.”
“You’ll let me go there? Why?” She still didn’t turn around to face him. She twisted the brush in her hand and hesitated over what to do first—cream, powder, rouge, paint? She couldn’t remember what the first step was. She could vaguely remember the maidservants applying face powder, then doing her eyebrows, maybe her cheeks after that? At what point did they draw between her eyebrows?
“Because His Majesty summoned you.”
The brush clattered onto her vanity top. Her nostrils flared and her pulse raced. She tried to control the horror clawing beneath her skin, causing goosebumps along her flesh. She didn’t trust herself to look composed, so she only stared at her reflection in the small, handheld mirror. Her skin was pallid and ghost like. “Why—” She swallowed, her voice growing shrill. “Why does the emperor want to see me?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Did you—” She whirled around to find him leaning against her door, his arms folded over his chest, and narrowed gaze focused on her. He appeared too casual, like he had simply mentioned the weather, instead of telling her that she would be walking to her doom. “Did you tell him?”
“No,” he said sharply.
