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Oh, he thought he knew her fire. He had not seen anything yet. Melantha took a step back, her skin burning with the heat crackling inside her chest. “I will only let down my calm if you drop your own icy mask.”

“I don’t—” Rharreth blinked at her, as if he did not even realize he had a mask of his own.

“Do not play innocent with me.” Melantha jabbed his chest with her finger. His leather vest had little give to it, and the pain that jammed up her finger only added fuel to the heat swirling through her head. “You act all kind and honorable, but in reality, you only do the bare minimum that honor demands. You rarely act with any passion or do anything that would truly risk yourself.”

Rharreth gaped at her, his jaw working.

He was not even going to bother saying anything? Melantha bit back a scream, even if some of it still slipped through her teeth. “You do not even see it, do you? You have been the spare too long. Until now, your only duty was to exist. I know. I was my brother’s spare until his children were born. But now you are the king. You need to do more than merely exist. And that begins with how you treat me.”

“I don’t—”

She was in no mood to hear his excuses or explanations. “Right now, I am barely your wife. I am definitely not your queen. If all you wish for me to be is an ice queen who stands at your side during formal ceremonies, then fine. That is what I will be. But if you want my fire, if you want me to truly be your queen, then you have to stop shutting me out and start treating me like you think this marriage is going to last longer than a month or two, depending on how long it takes for some assassin to get to me.”

Melantha found herself jabbing Rharreth in the chest yet again. The pain was somehow satisfying. “You want to know why I act calm and serene? It is because that was how the elven nobility expected an elf princess to act. Well, I am in Kostaria now. Teach me how you want your troll queen to act, and that is what I will become.”

Rharreth stepped closer to her again. He cupped her chin, tipping her head up so that she met his gaze. “I’m not asking you to pretend to be something you are not. I want you to be yourself. I like the fire I see in your eyes.”

For a moment, Melantha stilled. His fingers were gentle beneath her chin, his face only a few inches from hers. The heat inside her twisted into something less painful and more a pleasant tingle.

What was going on? She had never felt like this before, not even with Hatharal, the elf she had been betrothed to marry.

No, Hatharal had looked at the fire and told her to bury it. He had said it was unbecoming of an elf princess.

Melantha stepped back from Rharreth’s grip, digging deep for the remnants of the heat in her chest. “I will only stop pretending if you do. You claim to be honorable, but I know your honor has limits. You did not torture my brother, but neither did you protest his treatment. You allowed me to help him, but you only helped him when you thought your brother would not find out. About the only time you ever risked yourself was when you took that whipping in an attempt to spare me. Why did you even do that? Why would you stand up to your brother when you had not up until then?”

Rharreth’s mouth was a thin line, but his gaze was thoughtful. When she met his gaze, he gave a slight nod, as if to acknowledge the truth of her words. “You were not a captured warrior and should not have been treated as one. It is not honorable to beat the helpless.”

He said the last sentence with such vehemence that Melantha knew he was not talking only about what was done to her.

His brother, King Charvod, had been cruel, and he had learned that cruelty from his father, King Vorlec. King Vorlec had been cruel enough to torture a teenage Farrendel.

Rharreth would also have been a young man at that point. While trolls lived longer than humans, they aged faster than elves, living about five hundred years instead of nearly a thousand like the elves. So Rharreth would have been around the same age Farrendel was now, though he had aged faster than Farrendel had in the past fifteen years, making Rharreth roughly Melantha’s age now.

If King Vorlec had been willing to torture a teenage elf, what would he have been willing to do to a young Rharreth? What about Rharreth’s mother?

Melantha remembered how Rharreth had said his father and brother often lived in Gror Grar while Rharreth and his mother lived here in Khagniorth. It did not sound like a happy family. Melantha’s own family had their problems—most of them recently caused by her—but at least they had been happy growing up. She had always known her father had loved her and would sacrifice anything for their family.

Perhaps that was why his betrayal of her mother’s memory with Farrendel’s mother had been so shocking to all of them. Even if he had spent the last ninety years of his life owning up to his transgressions and doing his best to fix what he had broken.

For the first time, Melantha understood how it was possible to fail so completely. Would she be able to restore what she had broken?

Maybe. But, first, she had to figure out how to build this new relationship. Perhaps, in learning how to build this relationship, she would figure out how to fix the ones she had destroyed.

She tipped her head up to meet Rharreth’s gaze. “I know you are not your father or your brother.”

As if realizing Melantha’s fire had been temporarily spent, Rharreth reached toward her but stopped short of touching her. “I see how I have not expended myself as I ought when it comes to you or the kingdom. I didn’t wish to appear as if I was expecting you to become something you are not. You are an elf. I don’t want you to feel as if I’m trying to turn you into a troll.”

It was good of him to worry about such a thing. Melantha felt something like a smile cracking the mask she had trained herself to wear. “Thank you for not pressuring me.”

All those years in her home in Tarenhiel, she had tried to hide the passionate part of herself. Yet, Rharreth had taken her anger and had not flinched away. Was this her chance to stop hiding the heat and turn all that passion inside her toward truly living?

Deciding to be daring, Melantha rested her hands on Rharreth’s chest, his leather vest smooth beneath her fingers. “But I do want to acclimate to your culture. I am willing to try new clothes or new ways of thinking or doing things. This is my new home and new life. There is no point in holding back. Instead, I want to embrace it as fully as possible.”

“And I promise that you don’t have to pretend with me. If there is something you don’t want to do or don’t want to adopt, then feel free to tell me. Here, when it is just us, you are free to be angry or frustrated or whatever else. I can take it.” Rharreth’s mouth quirked at the corner. “I also promise that I will work to include you as my queen. You are right. This is our life now, and I’ve been treating you like I expect this marriage to be temporary instead of like I expect you to truly be my queen. I’m sorry for that. And I’m sorry for how you were treated in the dungeon of Gror Grar.”

It was a start. A better start than Melantha had the right to expect.

Perhaps she and Rharreth had a chance to form some kind of relationship based on mutual respect. Not that Melantha was expecting a passionate, romantic love. She was not a hopeless, naïve optimist like Princess Elspeth, after all. Besides, it was not like Melantha knew how to love, if her treatment of her own brother was any indication.