Page 33 of The Nightmare Bride

I glanced up to find Kyven standing by the door, one ear cocked.

“Did you hear that?” he said.

I curled my lip, prepared to tell him just how unfunny I found his little joke, then choked on my reproach. Footsteps sounded in the hall, so heavy and lumbering they could only belong to one person.

My heart flung itself up my throat. “Oh no. No, no, no. You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Kyven burst into motion, crossing the room in two strides and taking me by the arm. Panicked as I was, I didn’t resist, just let him propel me toward the bed, where he motioned for me to get underneath.

“Hurry,” he hissed. More footsteps, closer now.

I threw myself onto the carpet and wriggled beneath the bed-skirt. Darkness swallowed me up, so complete that only the dust stinging my nose assured me I still existed.

Kyven must have snuffed his candle, because no light accompanied him when he squeezed in beside me. He settled so close that his body heat warmed my arm.

The footsteps stopped in the hall. A key grated in the lock.

My pulse roared. Would Olivian realize the door was already open? Smell the tang of the extinguished candle? Notice the dust smears we’d left behind?

A whimper snuck from my lips. Kyven inched closer, pressing his chest against my side. A warm hand landed across my mouth.

“No sound,” he breathed, so quietly I couldn’t even call it a whisper. “If I have to, I’ll go out and face him, but no matter what you see or hear, you stay here. All right?”

I nodded, knowing he could feel my agreement, even if he couldn’t see it.

We lay like that, unmoving, hardly even breathing, while the seneschal trudged inside. For long moments, Olivian just...stood there, not three feet from where the bed-skirt hid our shoes.

A tremor took up residence in my limbs. Did he know? Did he suspect?

Kyven must have felt me trembling, because he curved closer, his breath stirring my hair.

Out in the room, a match scraped. Faint light rimmed the bed-skirt. Kyven’s hovering face came into focus, the dimness leaching his irises of color.

He glanced pointedly at the hand covering my mouth, then raised questioning brows. When I nodded, his fingers left my lips. He planted his hand beside my head.

There was hardly any space under here. Just enough that he could brace himself over me, assurances in his eyes. I clung to the promise I found there, to the steadiness he radiated.

Then a growl broke the silence. “Show yourself.”

My heart rammed against my breastbone. Shit. Shitshitshit.

“I know you’re here.” Naked fury rode Olivian’s every syllable.

I bit back a cry. Kyven’s brow knitted, his eyes filling with something like regret. Or maybe resolve. He laid a finger across his lips, then pointed to himself and out toward the room.

Terror crashed over me like a breaking wave.

No. No, fuck that. I might’ve agreed to let him go, but who cared what I’d said?

I wouldn’t hide here while Kyven had the life choked from him.

While blood vessels burst in his eyes and all his teasing—his arrogance and half smiles—winked out of existence forever.

He levered himself over me, but I clamped my arms around him, then my legs, trapping him as he tried to wriggle free.

We struggled in silence, but I refused to let go. I didn’t care what I had to do, who I had to stab. How much of Zephyrine’s magic I had to borrow to ensure he walked out of here alive. I would do anything, I would?—

“Coraline,” Olivian growled. “You’ve been dogging me all day, so you might as well show your face. I’m not leaving until you do.”

I froze. So did Kyven. We stared at each other as realization dawned.

Sweet Zephyrine, the seneschal wasn’t talking to us . He was addressing his dead wife.

The bed frame shuddered as a heavy weight settled atop the mattress.

The spasm in my chest eased, if only by half. I pictured Olivian hunched above us, his brows lowered as he waited for a ghost.

“Ah,” he said, at length. “There you are.”

I frowned. His voice had changed. I hardly even recognized it, full of tenderness as it was.

“You’re so beautiful. I always forget how much.” He laughed—a strange, crooked sound, and... Goddess, he’d gone mad. Well and truly mad.

What followed was the most bizarre conversation I’d ever been privy to. Olivian seemed to fracture into two people, first praising his wife, then scolding her. He professed his love in one moment, and in the next, railed at the Lady for asking him to release Amryssa into the marsh.

“You can’t have her,” he shouted. “I won’t hear of it, so you might as well stop asking. Our daughter’s place is here, now. You made that choice. We both did.”

Now . The word caught in my mind and held. What did that mean? Had Amryssa’s place been somewhere else, once?

Olivian went on, spewing love and fury, the line between the two growing increasingly blurred. The whole time, Kyven and I stayed still as stones.

At last, the invective wound down. When Olivian finally stood, he did it in stages, as if he’d aged a decade in the last twenty minutes.

“I love you,” he told the empty room. “And hate you. And gods among us, how I wish you hadn’t left me.”

His footsteps receded. Hinges creaked. The key clinked in the door.

I blew out a mile-long breath. The seneschal had locked us in, but Kyven could always use the picks from this side. Olivian had also left a lamp burning, but considering what I’d just heard, I doubted he was in a frame of mind to realize, much less return to rectify his mistake.

“You can get off me now,” I said.

Kyven didn’t budge. He just lay atop me, much as he had on our wedding night.

“I could.” His half smile resurfaced. “But ‘can’ and ‘want to’ are two vastly different things.”

I studied him. Gods, I was already getting annoyed again. Mostly because if I didn’t, I’d get unreasonably turned on by the press of his hips against mine. “Okay. I want you to get off. How’s that?”

“How badly?” he crooned.

I narrowed my eyes.

“As badly as you wanted to stop me from going out there?” he continued. “As badly as you wanted to keep the seneschal from killing me? Because, for someone who professes to hate me, you seemed awfully invested in my survival.”

I considered that, then reached up to cradle his stubbled cheeks. “The only reason I wanted to keep Olivian from killing you,” I said sweetly, “was so I could do it myself.”

He blinked, then broke into a smile. “Gods, lioness. You’re a terrible liar. The absolute worst.”

I was. I really was. And we both knew it, but that didn’t stop me from bucking hard enough to dislodge him. He rolled aside with a sound that was half chuckle, half groan.

“Whatever,” I said, “I don’t?—”

I froze. And stared at the underside of the mattress, at the spot I hadn’t yet glimpsed, what with Kyven looming over me that whole time.

“What?” he said. “Don’t tell me you miss me already?”

“No, you insufferable prince. I just... Just...” I jabbed a finger upward, indicating the leatherbound book wedged between the slats. The brown leatherbound book. “ Look .”

Kyven rolled onto his back and followed my finger. A long silence spun by.

“Well,” he said. “Would you look at that?”