Page 11 of Her Blind Deception (The Dark Reflection #2)

Chapter Eleven

I woke to the sense of someone moving into bed behind me, and for a moment I froze with shock. A hand slid over my hip as the warmth of another body pressed against my back.

‘Didn’t we have a conversation this morning about this bed being too small for both of us?’ Draven murmured against my ear, sending shivers cascading down my spine.

‘I don’t believe I invited you to share it.’ My voice was thick with sleep, but the grogginess only softened the edges of my resistance, letting me think with my body instead of my brain, and I molded myself him, tilting my head to seek his lips. It was mortifying, how quickly he could erase me with just the brush of his fingers and a voice at the back of my neck. His hand roved over my stomach and up to cup my breast, tracing his fingers lightly over the swell and peak of it.

‘Keep pretending you need to be convinced.’ His hand skated back down over my stomach, bunching up my nightdress until his fingers could dip between my thighs. I gasped and arched into him. ‘It feels to me like I’ve already won you over.’

My only response was a quiet moan as he slowly stroked me. He kissed his way down the back of my neck, lingering between my shoulder blades, his every touch strumming at my nerves until my whole body was quivering, until I couldn’t take the light, teasing contact and I twisted around to face him, winding my hands in his hair as I pressed my mouth to his, hitching a leg around him to show him what I wanted. But he didn’t grant my request, continuing his slow, rhythmic exploration with his fingers as I tried to pull him closer. He rolled me onto my back and broke the kiss to hover above me, a hungry smile flickering at the corner of his mouth.

‘I want to watch you,’ he said, his voice husky. ‘Tell me how you want it.’

My breath was coming faster. I should have resisted him, should have refused to let him have this over me, another moment of holding me at his mercy, but all I wanted was to appease the rising tide of need, to press myself against him and let him damn me.

‘Harder.’

‘Here?’

‘ Yes.’

‘Like this?’

‘Don’t stop.’

‘Ask me nicely.’

‘ Please.’

And then he was kissing a searing path down my stomach as his arms slipped beneath my legs, drawing me up by the hips. When he reached the place I wanted him, his mouth on me was hot and insistent, his tongue running along every eager nerve ending, and I couldn’t help the cry that escaped me as he coaxed my body into song. I arched my back and my hands found the thick locks of his hair, wound their way through them like I was holding on to keep from drowning. He looked up, his eyes dark, ravenous, and the pleasure intensified as he slid a finger into me, growing hotter and brighter until it burst in a crescendo of gasping cries.

I tried to catch my breath and my wits as he untangled himself from my legs, returning to hover over me, and he began to slip the sleeves of my nightgown down my arms with the same care that he’d manoeuvred his game pieces around the board. But this time, he wasn’t going to win. With a smooth twist of my body, I tumbled him over until I was the one on top, straddling his waist. His torso was bare, dappled with slants of moonlight peeking through the curtains, and he blinked in surprise before his gaze dropped down, taking me in. He entwined his fingers with mine, brought my hand to his mouth and whispered my name against my palm. Leaning forward, I slipped my other hand beneath the pillow.

He went as rigid as a board the moment the point of the hairpin touched his neck.

‘There’s an artery right here.’ I pushed the point in slightly, dimpling his skin. ‘If I pierced it, you’d bleed out in minutes.’ My voice was a little shaky, but the words were unyielding.

We stared at each other, still breathing too fast.

‘I don’t know about that, my dear,’ he said after a pause, dropping his hands to my thighs, sliding up my nightdress. ‘I’m not easy to kill.’

‘Maybe not, but I’d have fun trying. There are plenty of points on the body where a hairpin can do a lot of damage.’ Slowly, I traced the point of the pin down his throat. ‘Eardrum. Temple. Groin.’ His mouth twitched, and my heart beat a little faster when I realised that look in his eyes wasn’t fear, or even anger. Beneath me, he was hard.

‘If you wanted my attention, you already had it,’ he said silkily.

‘What I want is for you to listen very carefully.’ I pressed the pin into the hollow at the base of his throat, stopping just short of piercing his skin as I leaned closer. His nostrils flared. ‘Don’t ever pull a trick like that again.’

‘What trick?’ He splayed his fingers against my stomach, reaching to curl them around my waist.

‘The execution. The lying to the court. The using your knowledge of my past to convince me to go along with it. The whole damn thing.’

‘Rhiandra.’ He leaned forwards a little, like he hardly even noticed the sharp point digging into his neck. ‘A marriage doesn’t mean I’m yours to command.’

‘Perhaps a marriage doesn’t, but you’re the one who crawled into my bed in the middle of the night,’ I said. The smirk faded from his face to be replaced by a wariness. A spark of triumph fuelled my confidence, and I ploughed on ahead. ‘There’s no need for our marriage to be this physical. So if you’re here, you either want my cooperation and you think this is how you’re going to get it. Or, you want me. ’ My words were like butter on a blade, rich and razor-edged.

‘Enough,’ he said sharply. He finally pulled the hairpin away from his throat. I let him, while keeping it clenched in my fist, like I might still decide to stab him with it. ‘I shouldn’t have surprised you today. I’m sorry.’

But an apology wasn’t enough for me, now. I was intoxicated with the rush of power, and I wanted more than just remorse from him. ‘Not good enough,’ I said, returning the hairpin to his skin, aiming it at the centre of his chest. ‘Maybe I want you crawling on your belly to beg for forgiveness.’ Holding his gaze brazenly, I trailed it down his stomach, traced the sharp ridge of his pelvis. ‘Maybe I should throw you out just to see if you will.’

He laughed and sat up, gripping my hips tightly as he leaned in to skim his lips up the side of my neck. ‘You won’t keep me out,’ he crooned. ‘When I want something, I don’t stop until I get it.’

My resolve slipped, my anger growing foggy, and my fingers on the hairpin loosened even as I kept it pressed to his abdomen. ‘So this isn’t just about manipulating me. You do want me.’

‘I want you.’ He held me as though the shard of metal at his side wasn’t even there. The urge to kiss him became a heady, insistent pulse beneath my skin, fuelled by desire or power or how decadent those words sounded spoken with his voice. ‘I want to be the only one you look at when you walk into a room.’

The pin fell to the bed as I pressed my hands to his chest, trying to steady myself, to hold on to myself. I went to speak, but he caught my lips, stole the words from my mouth. He slid a hand between us, positioned himself against me, pushed into me slowly, and I broke the kiss with a gasp, gripping his arms as he held me there, our bodies flush against each other.

‘I want you on your knees for me.’ His words fractured and he gripped me harder as I began to move against him, his breath catching. ‘I want you to cry out my name over and over until it’s the only word you know. ’

‘Never,’ I vowed, rocking faster, chasing the flickering promise of a second release, desperate to fill the gnawing abyss of wanting him. Knowing it wouldn’t make a difference, because I’d only want him again. He'd provoke me and scrutinise me and thrill me and I'd want him again.

This is nothing , I silently prayed, but a means to an end . I dropped my head back, my eyelids fluttering closed, even as I bit down on the name that wanted to spill out of me, that wanted to shatter the vow I’d just made.

He gripped my hair, pulled my face back to his.

‘Don’t close your eyes. Look at me.’

But I couldn’t. I took his face between my hands and kissed him hard, and it felt like kissing the darkest hour of the night, like dangling my feet over the edge of a sheer drop, like holding a knife by the blade and squeezing. Then he was tumbling me onto my back, pinning me down, burying himself in me over and over, his pace quickening, and my mouth was on his chest, his throat, biting down against the salt of his skin as he breathed my name in my ear. Rhiandra. I pressed my face into his neck as my climax struck, crying out against his skin as pleasure snapped through me, leaving me limp and trembling, and he swore, his fingers digging into me as he drew me hard against him, and whatever he’d said of my surrender, in that moment I had his. We lay panting in the aftershocks, gripping one another like we were afraid to let go. Because this, falling into bed together, made sense in a physical sort of way. At least our bodies seemed to understand each other.

I couldn’t savour it, though. There was something in his admission, that he wanted me, that made him more of a threat. When I caught my breath, I slid out from beneath him, brushing my hair out of my face and trying to shake off any phony intimacy there had been.

This is nothing , I repeated to myself. This is temporary.

Because there was only one thing I wanted from this marriage; a way out of it. A way to keep my glamour but break his hold on me so I could cut him loose before he discovered my deception. A way to bring Gwinellyn back from the Yawn that wouldn’t result in my death or hers. A way to control him.

Before, I’d wondered how much of this destructive chemistry between us was one sided. I had believed he was just trying to cloud my judgement by tangling with me in bed. I didn’t realise that belief was a defensive barrier until now, when it was gone.

He lay back beside me, and for a long time, neither of us spoke. I tried to work myself up to the moment when I would throw him out of my bed, tried to find the frosty animosity and suspicion I seemed to have temporarily misplaced.

‘You should go,’ I said finally, my words skimming over the silence, barely piercing it, ‘before I find something more lethal than a hairpin to threaten you with.’

He shook slightly with quiet laughter. ‘I admire your commitment,’ he said, ‘but you’re more transparent than you think.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Leaning up on my elbows, I eyed him. He had his arms slung behind his head, and that look on his face that made me want to throw something at him. And as I looked at him, really looked at him, I realised I’d never seen him without a shirt on before. His torso and arms were corded with hard, wiry muscles and marred with ridges and marks, a map of scars across his body that I couldn’t help but wonder at the origin of. I’d seen binders with less evidence of old injuries, soldiers with softer forms.

I wondered what he was thinking as he looked at me.

He reached out and tugged me close, enveloping me in his arms.

‘Let go!’ I squirmed as I tried to get free.

‘You don’t need to fight me every single moment,’ he said, and I stilled. ‘I’m not a danger to you.’

He was a danger. Every single moment. And he was at his most dangerous when I forgot that fact. But his arms were warm, and struggling, the endless struggling , was exhausting.

And lonely.

Releasing a long, deep sigh, I closed my eyes. I could have one minute to just enjoy being held. In one minute, I would send him away.

In one minute.

The room was dimly lit, the air tinted with the smell of perfume and liquor and sweat. Madam Luzel thrust a tray of drinks into my hands and gestured at a table she wanted me to serve.

‘Sell them a fantasy,’ she said, her face in shadow.

I crossed the floor of the Winking Nymph to deliver the drinks only to find four people I recognised seated there. The Grand Weaver. The Grand Paptich. Lord Boccius. Prince Tallius.

‘Play a song for us,’ Boccius demanded, blood bubbling from his mouth and dribbling down his chin as he spoke .

‘You owe him that,’ Tallius said, watching the blood drip to the table. ‘I’ll do the same for you when you’re dead.’

‘Of course,’ I said, ‘just let me put your drinks down.’

The table began to wobble, then to shrink, and they jeered as they watched me try to place down my tray.

Flames sprang from Dovegni’s hands. ‘Play,’ he said. ‘Now.’

‘I can’t. Please help me,’ I begged. But it was too late. The room was on fire.

I turned to run, but in a breath all four of them were on me, their hands all over me, holding me captive, laughing as the world became heat and flame and smoke and the smell of singed hair.

And then they were gone. Instead, Draven was kneeling by my side, brushing my hair away from my ear as the flames bore down on us.

‘It won’t be the last you’ll see of him,’ he whispered.

I woke to a scream tearing from my throat as I struggled to free myself from the hands that held me captive.

‘Shh, you’re alright. It was a dream.’

I gulped a breath and the salty smell of skin washed away the memory of singed hair. I buried my face in a warm chest as gentle hands stroked my head and down my back. My heart began to slow down.

‘What were you dreaming of?’ Draven asked. His voice was rough with sleep.

‘Fire.’

He didn’t say anything for a long time, so long I almost thought he’d dozed off. Rolling onto my back, I stared up at the canopy of the bed, turned grey by the ashen moonlight, and wondered at how something so vibrant and green could be so easily leeched of all its colour.

Finally, he asked, ‘Did you ever look for them?’

‘Who?’

‘The ones who hurt you. You have that power.’

‘And then what, have them dragged before me? Have them realise who I am and give them the chance to bleat about what they did to me? No thank you.’

‘We would be too careful to let that happen.’

There was a note of something in his voice that I couldn’t identify. I turned to peer at his expression in the slick, silvery dark.

‘I’d prefer to never have to think about,’ I said instead, my voice just a breath above a whisper.

Fingertips brushed my cheek. ‘That doesn’t seem to be working.’

I rolled away to the cold edge of the bed. ‘It was one nightmare. The rest of the time, it never happened and they don’t exist.’

He answered that with only silence.

Time became malleable, stretching in the way night-time moments do, passing at a rate I couldn’t measure. It might have been hours. It might have been only minutes. I couldn’t get comfortable, tossing from one side to the other, flicking the covers off and then pulling them up again, my mind whirling round and round, tossing the dream back in my face every time I began to drift off, and jolting me back into wakefulness.

Finally, Draven sat up. He climbed out of bed and went rifling around in the dark. I wondered if he was planning on finding somewhere else to sleep, but he returned dressed, thrusting a robe at me. ‘Come on.’

‘Come on where? It’s the middle of the night.’

‘It’s not like you’re busy sleeping. Let’s go.’

Despite myself, I was curious, and I donned the robe before climbing out of bed to follow him. The guard by the door said nothing as we sidled past, and Draven didn’t even glance in his direction. What stories would he feed to the housemaids in the morning? Would he tell them he’d seen the king and queen sneaking around the palace in the middle of the night, barefoot and sleep-ruffled?

‘Are you going to tell me where we’re going?’ I grumbled as we descended a flight of stairs.

‘I think it’s good for you to just follow along every now and again,’ was all he said in response, his tone light. As though he wasn’t always tugging me around without telling me what was going on.

The palace was full of shadows and silence, with only the occasional guard or servant in the halls. We were all but alone, accompanied by only the sound of our footsteps. I still felt jittery and vulnerable from my dream, so I wasn’t in the mood for bickering with him the way I usually might. Instead, I tried to distract myself with the other things that had been plaguing me. Dovegni. The execution. The Tiercelins. But the memory of flames kept bursting into focus whenever I blinked.

It was irritating, because I was usually an expert in burying unpleasant memories. Of course, the one time they snuck up and overwhelmed me had to be when Draven had fallen asleep in my bed .

‘This is the servant’s quarters,’ I said suddenly as he led me through a discreet door and down another hallway, one I recognised from when I had first come to the palace as a maisera.

‘I know.’

A few minutes later, we emerged at the bottom of a staircase and into the cavernous kitchen. It was strange, seeing such a big kitchen so still. Benches gleaming, utensils stacked and ready, sinks empty. The air was still warm from the coals glowing in the enormous fireplace, and it smelled of the memory of roasting meat. There was a feeling to it, that it could all spring to life at a moment’s notice, which it would in mere hours. I thought we might be passing through, headed outside, but he stopped by a long table that lined the wall, where the kitchen staff would eat their meals.

‘Sit,’ he said.

I pursed my lips and thought about asking him why, but I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of being able to ignore the question. Instead, I sat, folded my arms, and watched him with suspicion. What was he going to do? Did he need salt for summoning a demon? Was he going to take one of the meat cleavers and hack someone into little pieces? Did he have the head of an enemy stored in the pantry and he thought it might cheer me up?

Given that we were in a kitchen, it shouldn’t have surprised me so much when he began poking around in the fireplace, retrieving a glowing coal and setting it beneath one of the stoves, before whisking a pot from a rack and setting about ladling creamy milk into it from one of the pales lined up against the wall.

‘I didn’t take you for someone who spends much time in a kitchen,’ I said as he began rifling through a rack of spices.

‘That just goes to show how flimsy your perception of me really is,’ he replied, placing the pot atop the stove. For a while, we were silent.

‘Why bother with the coals?’ I asked. ‘I’ve seen you conjure flame in the palm of your hand.’

He shot me a look. ‘You can’t have forgotten our conversation about the cost of magic.’

‘No. But it seems such a little thing, one tiny flame, in comparison to magicking a representative of every noble family in the kingdom into standing meekly by while Lord Boccius is eaten alive.’

‘You really are angry about that, aren’t you?’

‘How astute an observation. What gave me away?’

‘Very angry,’ he muttered as he stirred his concoction. ‘I didn’t realise he was such a friend of yours.’

‘I’m angry because it was rash. And because you surprised me with it. And because Boccius wasn’t worth it. If I’d known you were planning on pinning the crime on someone, I would have picked the Grand Weaver.’

His gaze darkened, the mockery fading, and he was looking at me with a strange expression. The intensity of greed, perhaps, but silkier somehow. I liked it. It thrilled me.

‘What?’ I asked, unable to keep a satisfied smile from my mouth. ‘Have I shocked you?’

‘You get this look when you’re feeling vicious,’ he said. ‘It’s captivating when I’m not the target.’ He began ladling the liquid from the pot into mugs, releasing bursts of steam into the air as he did .

‘You didn’t answer my question about the magic,’ I reminded him.

He was silent for long enough that I thought he wasn’t going to answer. But finally, he said, ‘I have no talent with fire. It costs me more.’

‘What do you have a talent with?’ I asked as he placed the mugs onto the table and sat opposite me.

‘Minds,’ was the only answer he gave. Which told me nothing I didn’t already know. ‘Here,’ he said, nudging the mug towards me. ‘This, my dear, is the perfect fix for nightmares. Or for when you’ve been beaten to a pulp.’

‘It heals injuries?’ I picked up the mug and sniffed it. The steam was sweet and spiced.

‘No. But it distracts from the pain for a while.’

‘What do you know about nightmares and beatings?’

‘Plenty.’

‘I can’t imagine anyone beating you. Couldn’t you just make them feel like hugging you or something instead?’

He watched me sip from my mug. ‘I’ve not always been able to use magic.’

I had to admit, the drink was delicious. Sweet and rich as caramel, with enough spice to warm me up from the inside out. ‘This is good. Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’ He flashed me a crooked smile that I found strangely rewarding. He had a dimple, I realised suddenly. On the right side. I couldn’t remember if I’d ever seen it before. Perhaps he’d never actually smiled at me before. Not really.

‘So who beat you?’ I asked quietly.

‘No one who’s still alive to talk about it,’ he said, the smile fading. ‘That’s when you really can decide something didn’t happen, you know. When anyone who could argue it did is dead.’

‘I’ll keep that in mind.’ Something kept me from probing further just to satisfy my rabid curiosity. Maybe it was the way the dimple had vanished when I’d asked, like it had never been there to begin with. Like I’d never see it again.

We drank in silence, and for as long as I could, I resisted the urge to peck at him, to say something leading or insulting that would shatter the unusual sense of ease that settled over us. It was almost instinctive, this compulsion to lash out and shatter such peace. Maybe it was because peace could so easily be deceptive, could lure you into complacency, then ambush you with conflict and make you feel a fool for being taken unawares. The comfort of sitting here like this, sipping hot drinks in the middle of the night, felt too good. It would be too easy to sink into it and let it drown me.

But I had to always remember that this thing between us wasn’t easy. Secrets weren’t easy, and neither were lies. Power and control weren’t easy. If this moment was a truce, then it could only last as long as the milk in our mugs. Beyond this moment was everything he hadn’t told me, his hidden motives, his half-truths and casual manipulations. And there was the ever-present lie I’d told about the princess in the Yawn, and the threat of what he’d do to me if he ever learned of it.

But even knowing that, I didn’t stop him from returning to my bed with me when we’d finished the drinks. It was all part of the game, I told myself. Let him believe he was slowly reeling me in closer. As though I still believed he couldn’t .

The light was pale with morning when I woke and met with the shock of Draven next to me. His hand was curled by his face on the pillow, his fringe dishevelled on his forehead, his eyes closed. I breathed shallowly as I studied him, unsettled by the sight of his face without a smirk. Everyone looks unguarded in sleep, I reminded myself. Every face is softer, sweeter, without the bitterness consciousness brings. It was only the contrast that inspired any feelings of tenderness. He might have thought the same of me if he’d woken first.

Would he have thought the same of me if he’d woken first?

The covers had fallen from him, exposing his shoulder, his torso, and I found my gaze drawn to that map of old injuries on his skin. That sharp, silvery slash that cut beneath his collarbone, so raised that it must have been deep and poorly healed. Without thinking, I reached out to touch it. His eyes snapped open. His hand shot out to close on my wrist, so fast I flinched. We stared at each other for a tense moment. The confusion cleared from his eyes, his brow relaxing, and the corner of his mouth twitched. It was the first time I thought of his mockery as a shield when I saw it crash back down over his face.

‘I hope you’d at least do me the dignity of a blade and not try to strangle me with your bare hands,’ he said, releasing my wrist as I tugged it away.

‘Sweet that you think I’d bother to do it myself when so many others are waiting for the pleasure,’ I said, sitting up. ‘Why waste the energy?’

Slipping out of bed, I combed at my hair with my fingers, my eyes flicking to the curtains, assessing how late in the morning it was. There was a slight prickle in my face as the cold numbness of the glamour began to ebb. For some reason, the idea of him watching me stand before the mirror made me feel queasy, even though he knew the ugly truth behind my beauty. Perhaps I didn’t want to remind him that everything he wanted in me was a lie of his own creation. Perhaps I didn’t want him to see the way I had to grit my teeth to confront my real face.

Perhaps it was just none of his damn business.

‘You seemed to think I was worth the energy last night,’ he drawled. ‘Perhaps you’ve had a change of heart?’

‘If I have, I’m sure you’ll correct it before long,’ I said. ‘I certainly don’t like you enough to have you lingering around and watching me while I dress, so you can go now.’ I tossed the remark over my shoulder as I padded into the bathing room, deliberately keeping myself from looking back to see how he would react.

I lingered impatiently, splashing water up my arms and counting to a hundred in my head as the prickling in my face increased, half expecting him to follow me. He didn’t.

When I re-emerged, it was to an empty room.

Batting away an irritating niggle of disappointment—I’d wanted him to leave—I steeled myself in readiness to stand before the mirror by thinking of the night before. With a thrill, I picked the hairpin up from the side table and rubbed my thumb over the sharp metal spikes. I had won the moment. It had felt good .

And when Leela brought news with my breakfast a little while later, I felt even better. She had a copy of the duty roster for the palace soldiers that she’d bribed from one of the scullery maids, and what’s more, she knew where the soldiers went to drink. As I contemplated how I could use this information, the quiet moment in the kitchen faded to little more than a hazy dream of sweet steam and a dimpled smile.