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He came into your safe place without asking and now he’s demanding yet more things from you. How dare he?
A small thread of anger began to wind through the cold grip of fear—because, yes, how dare he come in here, demanding explanations from her? Calling her names and threatening her? This was her private space—hers.
‘I’m sorry,’ she forced out, staring at her hands and ignoring her anger.
Getting angry only made things worse. Apologies, even if you didn’t mean them, were the best thing for calming angry men. Then again, they’d never worked on her brothers—not when her very existence had made them torment her.
‘That’s all?’ The edge in his tone rubbed against the same raw place it had rubbed against the day before. ‘You’re sorry?’
She knew it was always a mistake to fight back against someone more powerful than you, and yet that small thread of anger grew hotter, brighter, and abruptly she was sick of him. Sick of his demands and sick of her own weakness at caving in to them.
A beaten dog, he’d called her, with contempt in his tone. And of course he’d be contemptuous. He was tall and strong and physically powerful. He was King.
He’d probably never lived in fear of being hurt or maybe even killed by those who were supposed to love you and protect you. He wouldn’t know what it was like to be small and fragile and utterly defenceless. He wouldn’t know what it felt like to be hunted like prey.
How dared he judge her when he knew nothing whatsoever about her? Howdaredhe?
‘Well?’ she snapped before she could stop herself, looking up and meeting his silvery, icy gaze. ‘What else do you want? I apologised.’
He was standing there, towering over her, muscular arms folded across his broad chest. Obdurate as a mountain.
‘You have wasted my time, mouse,’ he said flatly. ‘I have a country to fix and I do not want to spend the entirety of my morning running around after an Accorsi.’
Beaten dog. Mouse. Small. Insignificant. Powerless.
If he had been either of her brothers she would have cowered, sick with fear. Yet for some reason, just like it had the day before, her anger only flickered higher, hotter, making her lift her chin in unconscious insolence.
‘Then don’t. No one asked you to run around after me.’
His eyes widened a fraction and she thought she caught a glimpse of surprise there. Clearly he hadn’t been expecting her snap back at him. Well, good. Shewasn’ta beaten dog, and she was tired of being treated like one.
He’d said he wouldn’t hurt her, and maybe he’d been telling the truth, but right now she didn’t care. She didn’t have any energy left for fear.
‘I don’t like the royal apartments,’ she went on, since she might as well while she had the courage. ‘There are bad memories there. So if you don’t want me to have a panic attack, I suggest that you don’t lock me in any more and either let me stay in my old room or here.’
‘A panic attack?’ he repeated slowly, his black brows drawing down.
‘Yes. I presume you know what they are?’ She gripped the edge of her blanket, her anger burning higher and hotter at the unfairness of it all. At how he’d had her locked into a place full of past trauma and then been angry with her for trying to leave it. At how he saw her—vulnerable and frightened—and found that contemptible.
‘But maybe you don’t,’ she went on hotly. ‘Since you’re the King now. And kings don’t ever have panic attacks, do they? They never get scared and they’re contemptuous of those who do. They never stop to think about the poor dog, or even of why it was beaten in the first place.’
The torrent of words fell into the silence of the room, echoing around her, and immediately she knew she shouldn’t have said anything. She shouldn’t have confronted him. She should have bowed her head and kept on apologising, kept on appeasing him, done whatever he’d ordered her to do. Because talking back drew attention and attention was never a good thing. It only made everything worse.
Except it was too late. She’d been pushed one too many times, and this man, this enemy of hers with his disturbing presence, who’d made her marry him and talked sternly of prison cells and beaten dogs, had been the last straw.
She might be small and defenceless, but she’d found some unexpected steel inside her—so too bad if he didn’t like what she’d said.
His face was impassive, his gaze sharp, betraying nothing of what he thought about her tirade. But she lifted her chin even higher, just to show him that she didn’t care what he thought. Didn’t care that she’d snapped at him and wasn’t showing him the respect he’d spoken about the day before. Not a bit.
What could he do to her anyway? Put her in a prison cell? She’d been living in one for all twenty-three years of her life, and nothing could be worse than this palace. Nothing.
He was silent for a very long moment. Then he said, ‘For a mouse, you have quite sharp teeth.’
‘Don’t call me that,’ she said fiercely. ‘I amnota mouse. Or a damn dog!’
His gaze glittered, focusing on her with disturbing intensity. ‘No,’ he murmured. ‘Clearly not.’
A curious prickling sensation swept over her skin in response, making it feel tight and hot, as if his icy silver gaze was akin to a physical touch, and a flush of heat crept up her neck and into her cheeks, warming her.