Page 10 of The Nightmare Bride

K yven’s brows arched as he crossed the threshold into my room. “You lock your keymistress in at night? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

I closed the door and turned, my lips arranged in a smile. Zephyrine, my face would hurt by the end of this charade. “Usually, but tonight’s different. I’d rather not have her...interrupting anything. If you know what I mean.”

“Ah.” The candlelight thawed his eyes to chilly flames. “Aren’t you full of surprises, then?”

“Oh, just you wait.” My tone played at seduction, but what I really meant was, Your death will be swift and painful.

“I must admit,” he said, throaty, “I’m very much looking forward to this next part. I have been ever since I saw you at breakfast.”

I nearly choked. I betted he had. He’d probably been dreaming about the many ways in which he could hurt me.

Tattoo his ownership onto my flesh for everyone to see.

Or maybe he didn’t intend to let me live until morning at all.

Maybe he planned to add to his list of not-so-little deaths before sunrise.

He ventured closer, and I backed away, my nerves coiling like cranked springs. Was this it? Would I meet the real Kyven now?

But he only plucked at the vine that bound our wrists, his face downturned. His hair slid over his forehead, sending a wave of his scent into my nose.

I stiffened. That smell . I recognized it. Knew it like I knew my own heartbeat.

Saltwater and cypresses and firesmoke.

Kyven yanked at the knots, but I barely felt it, because the vault of my past yawned wide, whisking me back to all those nights spent at the fireside under open stars, when I’d had no roof to call my own.

When the wilderness had sprawled around me, endless and lightless and desolate, and I’d felt like the only person in existence.

When loneliness had branded its name on my heart, each fall of the sun carving the word deeper.

Sweet Zephyrine, why did Kyven smell like the marsh?

But then I realized—he’d just made a month-long trek from the capital. Half that time would’ve been spent on the lonely Oceansgate road, which cut through miles of wild everglade, where he and his attendants would have bedded down on open ground.

I shook myself, blinking away the thoughts. When I forced my attention downward, Kyven had loosened his half of the vine and gone to work on mine.

“That’s supposed to stay on until sunrise,” I murmured, and couldn’t have said why. I had no desire to honor the traditions, much less stay tied to him for another second. I wanted his evocative scent out of my nostrils, his shining hair far from my sight.

Preferably in a six-foot hole somewhere.

He released the vine and tossed it to the floor. “Don’t worry. I’ve spent a lifetime skirting expectations and have somehow managed to survive. I doubt this will be any different.” His mouth curled in a show of reassurance.

I searched his face. Why was he still talking this way, with such...warmth? He had no reason to maintain the charade any longer, so why not get down to the messy business of trying to hurt me?

Apparently, he had no immediate plans for that, because he turned and sauntered off. “I’ll just go wash up. Be out in a minute.”

The bathroom door closed. Once left to my own devices, I sagged against the wall. Goddess, I needed to get out of this gown. I hadn’t taken a full breath in hours, which was clearly affecting my rationality. I ripped off my marital crown and hunted beneath my skirts for my dagger.

Get this stupid dress off, I told it.

The dagger awoke, and all along my spine, laces popped free. I shoved the gown to the floor, but that only solved half my problem. I pawed at my body next, reinflating my hips and waist, restoring their proper curves.

Oh, thank Zephyrine.

My stomach settled into its rightful place. My lungs lightened with sweet, sweet air. I gasped, then gasped some more, until the fuzzy shadows lining my vision faded.

By the time Kyven emerged from the bathroom, I’d mostly recovered. I lay on the bed in my nightgown, another aching smile pasted to my face. The dagger rested beneath my pillow, awaiting its moment.

Kyven stopped at the foot of the bed. He’d stripped to his shirtsleeves and breeches. His hair had been wetted and combed back, freeing the planes of his face to glint in the candlelight.

I stared. My pulse throbbed in my throat, so thick and forceful I lost my breath all over again.

Maybe because it finally sank in that I’d married this man, or maybe because, without all that wedding finery, I could trace my new husband’s body right through his clothes.

Broad shoulders tapered to a rangy waist while muscle cabled his arms and thighs.

Despite his middling height, he radiated strength, but it was the hardened, hungry kind, the sort earned by days of hard labor that ended with too little on the table.

Where he’d looked so refined in his formalwear, now the low light revealed a wild, starving edge.

Prince or not, he looked nothing like a man who lounged around in gentleman’s clubs and made polite noises over fine china.

Was this his predator’s hunger shining through, then? Did the perverse appetites boiling inside him carve his body to hardness? Strip away the excesses of princehood?

“That bathroom has more mirrors than a carnival house,” he said, breaking the grip of my thoughts. “I was beginning to think I’d never find my way out.”

A grunt escaped me. I hadn’t expected that .

But he wasn’t wrong. Before this had been my chamber, it had been Eliana’s, and the woman had apparently required thirty-six different viewing angles when choosing her wardrobe.

Upon moving in, I’d left her mirror collection untouched, with the vague intention of finding out what Merron looked like from every perspective when he hoisted me onto the counter and ravished me.

Not that it would ever happen now, and not that Kyven needed to know that. “Are you sure you weren’t getting lost in your own reflection?”

At my jibe, an appreciative spark flared in his eyes. “Tempting as that was, my wife was waiting for me. And I’m far more interested in admiring her than myself.”

Wife. My breath hitched, but he said no more, only began a slow perusal of the room.

At my vanity, he lifted a long-dry perfume bottle and sniffed at the nozzle with the entitled air of a man handling his own possessions.

By the window, he ran a forefinger along the sill and inspected it for dust, then directed his attention outside.

He studied the forest’s spectral purple glow, his face inscrutable.

I lay there, tension vibrating through me. What was he doing? Why this studied inventory of my life?

“This place is lavish,” he murmured. “You’re fortunate. Though I suppose you’d have no way to know that.”

I frowned. I was fortunate, and absolutely knew it, but any prince of Hightower should see a long-faded bloom, a house whose glory days were so far past they’d flaked away to dust and collected beneath the baseboards.

Why did nothing about this man line up with expectations? Even Eliana’s letter hadn’t prepared me for... this .

Kyven took a seat on the empty side of the bed. He plucked a book from my nightstand and leafed through the pages, then swiveled to face me, brow raised.

“A romance?” His tone struck a balance between teasing and surprise. “You? I wouldn’t have guessed.”

I searched for my voice. “Why? Do I not seem like a reader?”

“Oh, I’d never cast doubts on your intellect. I just hadn’t taken you for the love story type. You seem too...fiery for that.”

My head spun. Now we were talking about...my reading habits?

“Lunk will like you, at any rate,” he said.

“Lunk,” I repeated dumbly.

“Mmm-hmm. He adores romances. Is this one any good? You’ll have to recommend it to him, if so.”

“Because Lunk...reads romances?”

“Oh, yes. Endlessly. He’ll bend your ear in half, if you aren’t careful.” He made an elegant gesture in the air. “He’s constantly trying to relate the plotline of his latest obsession to me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to remind him I prefer to live my love stories.”

I couldn’t help it—I scoffed.

“What?” Kyven looked at me askance. “I don’t seem like a man who falls in love?”

I nearly bit through my tongue trying to keep from answering that question.

“Because I do,” he said. “Oftentimes I fall in love in the evening, then out of it again by sunrise.” He flipped a page and let out a hum of approval. Judging by his place in the book, I guessed he’d landed on the spiciest passage, the one I’d read so many times I’d lost count.

“I...see,” he said as he scanned the lines. “Perhaps the love aspect isn’t what interests you most?”

The tips of my ears burned. “There’s more to romances than just the ‘love aspect.’”

“Clearly.” Kyven flicked the page, where I’d pressed in a dog-ear for easy reference. “It’s enough to make me suspect you’re no blushing maiden.”

I should have denied that, because Amryssa was as virginal as a snowdrop in its first bloom. But I needed to do something— anything —to break this awful tension. To shock the smile off his face so we could get on with it. “I’m afraid not.”

His expression melted into one of...appreciation? “Oh, thank Hyperion.”

Hyperion. Hightower’s bright, sunny patron god—a deity who probably dispensed blessings like candy, given that he hadn’t spent the last decade sleeping. His name sounded so incongruous here, inside Zephyrine’s crumbling walls. Like it had taken a wrong turn and lost its way.

But even the unfamiliar invocation couldn’t dull my surprise. Here in Oceansgate, bridal purity had fallen from favor along with things like lawfulness and taxes, but last I’d checked, the notion had been alive and well in Hightower. Especially among the monarchy.

“That’s...fine with you?” I ventured.

“Yes, it’s fine ,” he said. “Of course it’s fine. This next part won’t be at all enjoyable for me unless it’s enjoyable for you.”