Page 38 of The Nightmare Bride

T he nightmare came on quick. So quickly that Amryssa started screaming before I’d finished chaining her.

Thunder crashed outside, rattling her bedroom.

The walls rippled. Already, this nightmare outstripped the others—shadows boiled around us while worms writhed between the floorboards.

The sight made my stomach churn, but I lashed myself together with resolve.

I could not, would not, fall apart. Not when my best friend needed me.

More thunder boomed, drawing a shriek from Amryssa. I cranked her chains and clambered onto her bed.

“I love you,” I said, aiming my words into the gap between screams. What would Ky have said?

Something profound, probably. “And I want you to know your friendship saved me. I didn’t deserve it, but you gave it anyway, and that means the world to me.

So just...try to remember that. Even when this thing is beating down the doors inside your head. ”

That must have meant something, because her next scream guttered in her throat. “I love you, too,” she gasped. “Always. But go, Harlowe. You have to go .”

The world wobbled and surged. Chittering insects spewed from beneath the bedskirt, transforming the floor of Amryssa’s bedroom into a heaving black sea. Outside, the nightmare roared, making the entire tower sway.

My insides swayed along with it, but I took Amryssa’s face in my hands. “Listen. You’re going to get through this. We both are.”

Pain rippled across her brow. “I don’t know if I can. Not this time. I want... Out. I need to go outside.”

My lungs pinched. I growled a denial and unsheathed my dagger, calling the magic I’d used a thousand times before. Help her. Carry her through this.

The knife flared and sizzled, snarling at me in a way it never had. Guard her where she belongs. GUARD HER WHERE SHE BELONGS.

My lip curled. All this time, that hadn’t meant what I’d thought it did. “I will, but she doesn’t belong in the swamp. She belongs right here.”

The dagger pushed at me, and I pushed back, in what amounted to an invisible clash of wills. Amryssa bucked against her restraints. The nightmare screamed. The shutters rattled in their frames, the slats groping toward us like fingers.

I gritted my teeth so hard my mouth flooded with the taste of metal. Ironclad. Ky had called me that once, and I believed it now, made myself believe it. Zephyrine could fight all she wanted, but I’d bend her.

I’d break her, if I had to.

The dagger shrieked. GUARD HER WHERE SHE BELONGS .

A cry tore from my throat as I plunged the knife into Amryssa’s headboard. “You guard her, for fuck’s sake! You’re her mother!”

Whatever shred of Zephyrine lived inside capitulated. I felt it recoil like a kicked puppy. Then it circled back, more softly this time. Yes , it sighed. Help her. Guard her.

The dagger glowed violet. Skeins of magic unfurled and slid down the headboard, seeking Amryssa’s skin. The tendrils seeped into her, and within moments, her brow smoothed. The straining line of her throat softened. “Harlowe? It... What did you just do?”

“Kept you...safe...” I said, then threw out a steadying hand, because her coverlet had melted. Caustic goo adhered to my skirts, burning my skin wherever it touched. The room kaleidoscoped around me.

Panic flickered, but I pressed its spiky edges flat. I could last another minute. I would . After all, I’d just cowed a goddess, or a piece of one.

If I could do that, what else was I capable of?

“You have to go,” Amryssa whispered.

“I know.” I kissed her forehead, then scrambled off the bed. Black beetles swarmed my shoes, their tiny mandibles snapping, snapping, snapping.

“I’ll be back in the morning,” I gasped, and ran.

Dark thoughts chased me from the room. You’ll die here, and no one will care. Nothing will mark your passage from this world but a heap of picked-clean whiteness .

“Shut up,” I hissed as I locked Amryssa’s door and stumbled toward mine. The hallway rocked like a raging sea as blood welled from beneath the baseboards.

I ducked into my room and slammed the door. Ky awaited on my bed, wearing nothing but breeches. My chains and manacles were already assembled, needing only my wrists and ankles for completion.

His lips tilted. “Another few seconds, and I would’ve come for you.”

For a moment, I just stood there, buttressed by the sight of him. He’d ironed himself out since our confrontation in the swamp, and now confidence glowed off him, brighter than the myriad candles, more solid than the inhuman shapes scaling the walls.

Because those weren’t real. He was.

I was, too.

The moment I realized it, the nightmare’s illusions dulled.

I took a tentative step, then another. True steadiness escaped me—my legs wobbled and my muscles squirmed atop my bones—but I made it to the bed and planted my hands atop Ky’s shoulders.

And...goddess, he was so intensely solid. Like sun-warmed stone beneath my palms.

He peered up, wonder in his eyes. “You feel it.”

My stomach flip-flopped, but the longer I gazed down, the more the storm’s efforts receded. It was like I was inside the nightmare, yet apart from it, somehow. “I feel something .”

He took hold of my waist and stood. I stared up. My fingers glided from his shoulders to his neck, then up into that glossy hair.

He shivered. For long moments, we just stood like that, an island of stillness amid the maelstrom.

“You should probably chain me now,” I said, husky.

He nodded and let his hands drift to my dress, unfastening the hooks that ran down the front. “We won’t continue our earlier conversation. Not yet.”

I shook my head. No, now wasn’t the time. Whatever the truth, whatever he had to tell me, I set it aside. I only cared that he was here with me. For me.

That right now, in this moment, I was seeing him with utter clarity. And that, in all the time I’d known him, he’d never once hurt me. He’d only proven himself, over and over, in a thousand different ways. He’d cared for me.

Whatever Vick had over him, then, whatever Ky had to confess, it wouldn’t change that. “No, I’d rather talk about something else.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know. Something...happy?”

He finished with my dress and tugged it off. That done, he reached around for my corset laces. The surety of his fingers told a story, of how he’d done this many other times, on other evenings, in other bedrooms, with other girls.

But I set that thought aside, too, storing it on a high shelf, to be taken down and examined later. Or not. The past didn’t matter. Not right now.

“Something happy, hmm?” he said. “If you like, you could start by admitting how breathtaking you find me. I can’t think of anything happier than that.”

He yanked my corset loose and let it fall to the floor.

I stood there in my chemise, caught by his gaze. I’d never realized such pale eyes could command such depth, but that sky-deep expanse seemed to stretch forever. “You are breathtaking. So much that it hurts to look at you, sometimes.”

Shock leapt in his eyes, then smoothed into delight. His hands skated down my sides. He lifted me onto the bed and moved over me, his touch leaving flames in its wake.

I lay there, limbs splayed, a flashfire shiver starting somewhere deep.

I’d never imagined being chained to a bed could feel so.

..sensual, but Ky infused the process with both tenderness and promise.

His thumbs lingered along my pulse points as the cuffs clicked shut.

First my wrist, then my ankle. My other ankle, another wrist.

When he finished, I tested my restraints and, for once, didn’t chafe at the vulnerability they conferred. Goddess, the things he could do when I was helpless like this.

He cranked my chains and climbed atop me, his weight like a spear pinning me to the now.

Somewhere distant, the hurricane raged. Bits and pieces filtered into my consciousness— something monstrous hunched in the corner, its knobby spine rippling while a different something crunched wetly between its jaws.

But I drew a curtain down between myself and it. There was me, here. Ky.

That was all.

“I don’t believe you’ve ever complimented me before,” he said. “I think I like it.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” I said. “It’ll probably never happen again. I do still hate you, after all.”

He chuckled, a smoky sound that slid fire along my nerves. “Of course you do.”

Incredible. Here we were, mid-nightmare, and I couldn’t keep from melting at the sound of his laugh.

He leaned close, locking us into some private orbit. “Now, how would you like me to distract you? We could try what we did last time, or...something new.”

My breathing sped. Pressure built behind my eyes, an ache I recognized as the storm edging into my mind, but I’d already lasted longer than I should have. A heady sense of triumph joined the zing of his nearness, propelling me to some new height.

Fuck, this was a rush.

“Touch me,” I breathed.

His eyes heated. “Well. If you insist.” He caged my jaw with a hand, turning my head to expose the delicate skin of my earlobe.

I whimpered. The ceiling oozed fingers of shadow, but I steered my attention away, back to Ky.

“Where’s the line?” he murmured.

“Don’t kiss me,” I said. An inch, a mile, and all that.

Because even here, even in the midst of all this, I knew he had to marry Amryssa.

“Just...touch me. Please. Lick my neck, like you did on our wedding night. And talk to me. I know you don’t have feelings, but.

..maybe pretend like you do. Just for tonight. ”

“Oh, I have feelings.” He made a thrumming sound deep in his throat. “When it comes to you, I have plenty, as it turns out. Tender ones. Awestruck ones. Filthy ones. Ones that tell me I need to taste this place beneath your ear again.”

His mouth descended, gifting my neck with liquid heat, and I loosed a moan that sounded like a thousand voices all begging at once.