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Reyla

I froze. Pretty little bride?

Merrick’s words—coming from Lorant’s mouth.

“You fucker. You asshole,” I snarled. “Don’t call me that. Never you.”

“I call you what I please,” he growled.

“Well, fuck that too. You used me. Twisted me with this nasty little secret. But it’s over. I know who and what you are.”

“Tell me,” he purred, his words tickling across my nape and down my spine. Heat spiraled through me, and I froze, tears of dismay pricking at my eyes. How could my body betray me like this, make me crave him like this, when all I felt for him and Merrick was hatred?

“ Who am I?” he asked. “ What am I? Do tell.”

“You’re Merrick. You’re Lorant. You’re both of them. One of you controls this body at night while the other takes it during the day.” Fury roared through me. “You used me, played with me, while you two laughed.”

And that was the worst of it. They’d broken me when nothing else ever had.

Well, watch this.

My attempt to flit from underneath him fizzled, leaving me still at his mercy, pinned in place by his big hands and his big, naked body.

Desperation clawed through me. I tried to flit again. Over and over, and…nothing.

“Please tell me you’re not trying to leave me so soon, Wildfire. You came here for something, and I’ll happily oblige.”

“Fuck you. Take my body if that’s what you’re determined to do. Use me in every way possible. But know right now that while I might not be able to fight you off, I will find my revenge.”

How could I have thought I was falling in love with him— and with Merrick? That foolish feeling had been cauterized away, leaving only ashes behind.

I gave him a slick smile. “You’re going to die, Lorant. Die! And in less than six weeks.”

“This could be true.” Sadness flickered through his deep green eyes, and seeing it punched me in the gut, slamming through my anger, leaving only stupid pity behind.

“Why?” I asked. So many whys with not one single answer. “Tell me why you used me.”

“I’ve wanted you from the moment I first saw you. All of you. Every scrap of kindness, joy, and caring you might deign to give me.”

How slick, how full of sappy emotion he sounded. But it wasn’t true. All this was a lie.

“I knew there was almost no chance I’d ever be able to have you,” he added with a wry contortion of his mouth. “Do you know what that did to me?”

“This isn’t about you.”

“Isn’t it?” His face took on a sardonic twist. “You avoided me night after night, leaving me standing in the tower. Alone. Waiting. Always waiting.”

“You said we couldn’t meet up.”

“I did not!”

I paused. “You sent messages.” My words came out weak.

He shook his head, and his eyes locked onto mine. “I should’ve stormed your room, made you come to me.”

“You didn’t need to force it. I agreed.”

His sharp gaze narrowed on my face. “ Who told you I couldn’t meet with you?”

I blinked, trying to remember. “Surren, I think, one of the nights. Lord Briscalar, on another.”

“Lies.”

“They’re my friends. And while they’re eager to protect me, I don’t believe they’d lie about something like that.”

“Then someone interfered.”

“Who?”

“That’s what we need to find out.”

“There’s no we in this.” And why was I having an almost reasonable conversation with him?

It didn’t take long for my anger to churn through me once more.

“Don’t say us,” I snapped. “There never will be an us.”

“You are my wife,” he growled. “You married me .”

“I married Merrick. You’re two separate people.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Once again, he was making me think, shoving my fury to the side when I needed to hold it tight. If I couldn’t use it as a wall between us, I’d give in, and he and Merrick would complete whatever nasty plan they’d dreamed up for their “pretty little bride”.

He juggled my hands still bound over my head, continuing to pin me while holding up his wrist with the mating mark that matched my own. Moonlight streamed in through the window, stroking it, arching off of it weaving around his wrist, exactly like mine. “Seeing you, but never permitted to touch.”

“You broke that rule when you ground your cock against me on the ship.”

His lips quirked up on one corner before smoothing. “I seem to remember you thrusting your pretty little clit against my cock, taking considerable pleasure from my body. You came so sweetly in my arms.”

“You caught me at a bad time.”

“You wanted me then. You want me now.” He dragged his nose along my neck to the crests of my breasts. “Like I will always crave you.”

If he pushed this…

Force was one thing. I’d fight him to the bitter end if he did something like that.

But if he tried to seduce me, would I be able to resist?

“Let me go.” It was all I could do to make my voice sound calm and collected, though there was no reasoning with this man.

“I’m afraid I can’t.”

There he was, confirming my assumption.

“Let me go or I’ll…”

“You’ll what? Will you grab your blades from wherever I flung them and try to kill me again, my pretty little bride?”

“I told you not to call me that,” I snarled, bucking up against him, tugging at his hand holding mine secured above me. Damn, infernal man had too tight a grip on my wrists, and his body was heavy, pressing me down into the blankets I thought I’d be sharing with Merrick. Such a fool I’d been, having dreams like that about the king.

How easily they’d both subdued me.

His smile came out slick. “You prefer I call you Wildfire, then.”

“Never that.” Pinching my eyes closed, I willed my body to flit.

My feet smacked down on the wooden floorboards a few feet from the bed, and I splayed my arms wide to maintain my balance, stumbling away from him.

Glaring.

His deep green eyes too much like Merrick’s, yet not, remained locked on me as he rolled onto his back and tucked his palms beneath his neck on the pillow.

I did all I could not to glide my gaze down his naked body. He truly was scarred all over. Tiny ones, even on his belly and thighs, as if someone had bound him and poked him with a blade numerous times.

His cock…

Stop looking at his fucking cock.

It stirred.

“We weren’t playing with you.” He kept his gaze on the ceiling. “We never would. Know this.”

“I know nothing. Tell me why all the Evergorne kings die on their thirtieth birthday.”

“If only I could.”

“Could what? Die?”

If Merrick died, would Lorant? The pain of losing them both at one time stabbed through me, and it was all I could do to suck in air. It wasn’t as easy to shut off my feelings for them as I’d hoped. And that made me even more furious, particularly with myself.

“If only I could tell you.” He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat, shifting his neck as if working out kinks. Through it all, he watched me .

Always watching.

The craving in his gaze could not be denied, and it sparked something willfully determined inside me. I would not give in. I would not relent.

“Open your mouth and give me an answer,” I snapped. “It’s easy. Or are you suggesting you can’t tell me why all the Evergorne kings die?”

His head jerked in a yes.

Then he was coughing, gagging, smacking his chest with his fist.

“Why is the castle cursed?” I would drag answers from him before I left.

And I was going to leave this place, one way or the other. It was time to visit the dragons and take a long flight. If I hadn’t been crowned queen and felt an obligation to this court and its people, I’d scramble onto a dragon’s back and fly away, never to return.

As for Merrick - Lorant , I wasn’t going to have anything to do with either of them again.

“Can’t tell you that either,” he croaked, his hands wrapping around his throat, and his face losing color.

“Then tell me why you two share a body. More or less share. You look different at night versus during the day. Can you answer me that?”

“I’m asking you to stay.”

I knew very well what he meant. “What, no twisting me into compliance with the slick sort of favor you bound me to in the tower?”

“Stay because you want to be here.”

“I’m no longer Merrick’s or your willing bride.”

“Too late to back out of that part now, Wildfire,” he drawled, his intent gaze seeking and latching onto mine. “You’re married. You’re queen of this court. You’re stuck here whether you like it or not.”

I lifted my chin. “If I want to leave, I will.”

“And never find out what’s truly going on?”

He taunted me, teased me at every turn, even with this secret he appeared unwilling to divulge.

“Stay,” he said again. “Work with me at night and Merrick during the day. Find out what’s going on.” The last came out in a frustrated growl.

“How am I supposed to discover anything when everyone tosses out hints and then acts as if they never said a word? What can you tell me about what’s going on here?”

His pleading gaze met mine. The pain there tangled through me, making it nearly impossible to think. “If only you knew how much I wanted to tell you. How it started for us.” His air wheezed in and out, and the scar on his face stood out in a white slash across his face that was rapidly losing color. “How it will end. About the curse.”

I stepped toward him. “Yes. Tell me about the curse.”

“Discover the truth before it’s too late. Merrick and I are doomed. We will die if you don’t?—”

His face went florid, and he wrangled his hands around his throat, gasping and gurgling.

A low, primal groan escaped his lips, sending a ripple of dread through me.

“What are you doing? Stop fooling around.”

“Not,” he wheezed, his head jerking back and forth. Color continued to bleed from his face, and the veins in his neck threatened to burst from the strain.

“Lore?”

His chest heaved, his thick muscles contracting rhythmically as if they were in a futile battle with the invisible force cutting off his ability to suck in air.

I took another step toward him, flinging my hand to a blade at my side that was no longer there, as if I could use it to defend him. “Stop it.” He was playing with me, right? Trying to twist this like always, to manipulate me into?—

His eyes glazed over, the irritating, infuriating, much-too-arousing, reckless man I always saw there fading.

Lorant was not playing.

“Lore!” I leaped across the distance I’d put between us.

Before I could reach him, he lurched forward, his body crumbling, collapsing, hitting the hard floor with a sickening thud. He lay where he fell in a pile of contorted limbs and ashen gray flesh.

“Lore?” I croaked. Despite my rage and the bitter feeling of betrayal I’d clung to since I saw the change, I could not keep my heart from aching for them both. “Are you alright?”

He’d asked me to stay. He hadn’t begged.

But was this part of their game?

I nudged his leg with my foot, but he didn’t respond. He didn’t even twitch.

His lungs did not rise.

They did not fall.

I dropped to my knees beside him with a guttural wail wrenching up my throat.