Page 48 of The Consort's Curse
He moved restlessly, as if he’d almost taken another step toward me. But not quite. My own limbs had gone heavy, weighted by the bitterness and regret thickening the air between us. Beautiful? He called me beautifulnow, at this moment, when I’d be the greatest fool in the world to allow myself to believe it? As if he’d read my mind, extracted my most romantic, pathetic, adolescent desires, and meant to use them against me. As he’d used my naivete and friendlessness against me when he married me against my wishes and told me to stay in my room and not make any trouble. My mouth wouldn’t move, any words frozen in my throat.
“If you were another man I’d suspect you as a foreign agent, part of a network of spies. Or a homegrown traitor. Because that’s how I think, Remi. That’s how I live, how I was born, practically. But I know you’re precisely what you appear to be.” He shook his head, and he laughed, a horrible, grating sound. “Too good for—what did you call it? My dreadful family. I’ve spent years distancing myself from them, thinking I was better. And now it turns out I’m the worst of the lot, at least in your eyes. The way you’re looking at me makes that fucking clear. And I can’t even begin to argue with it. You were a means to an end. And now I—I’m sorry, Remi. I’m so fucking sorry.”
The heaviness in my head, the thickness in my throat, gods, I wished they were the symptoms of an oncoming cold rather than pure misery and rage. And longing, gods, a frantic, hopeless longing that raced through my veins and caught my mind in a throbbing whirlwind, to trust his apology. To believehim. I’d paced this room for hours and wished for his regret and his unhappiness—his acknowledgement of what he’d done wrong.
Now I had it. And it made me sick, sicker than that poison his father had given me. He had to go, leave me alone, even though I wanted to scream and rage and beat at his chest with my fists, and hope he’d make me believe in him again. If I gave in to the storm before he went, I’d never recover from the shame. If I gave in to him at all, I’d never be able to look in a mirror.
“You’re fucking sorry, Stefan? It doesn’t change anything,” I choked out, speaking less to him than with the desperate desire to convince myself. “It doesn’t change anything at all.”
“I know,” he said, very low. “Believe me, I know.”
“That’s the problem. I can’t believe anything you say to me, except for your dedication to your duty above anything else. I don’t want your apology.” A lie, a baldfaced lie, but it had started to come more easily to me, even though it tasted like another dose of poison. So far, I’d gotten nothing else from my marriage to him—except learning the necessity of lying. But it wouldn’t be all. I wouldn’t allow it to be all. I’d made a plan, and I had to carry it through. “So what I want is simple: I want the, the benefits of my situation. You hatched this plan with your father, and you’ve gotten what you want. You can have it. Use it to help Calatria. But you owe me the life of a noble consort, at least, since that’s what I am now, whether I like it or not.”
“It’s yours. Anything I can give you is yours.”
“Except my freedom to choose my own life, or to choose to help you out of my own love for my country, but that ship’s sailed, hasn’t it?”
I’d thought he’d been pale before, but now he’d gone white to the lips. He nodded jerkily.
“You’ll give me whatever I need to establish a life here, and you’ll introduce me properly to society,” I went on. “I want whatever freedom I can have. To go where I want and do as I please, without any interference from you or your father. I want you to get him to leave me alone. And I intend to learn to use my magic, no matter what everyone in Nevaia thinks of dawn mages.”
I’d agonized over that particular point. Using my magic meant…but thank all the gods I didn’t need him tonight. I’d have a day and a half to brace myself for the encounter. And surely it’d get easier and less overwhelming with time. It had to, or I’d lose what I had left of my mind.
“I want to write letters to my family.” My voice had started to shake enough that he had to notice, but I couldn’t control it anymore. “Visit them once it’s feasible.” I sucked in a breath, spots swimming in my vision. “And I want you to leave me alone, too. You’ll be a model husband in public. In private, you’ll—do what I need you to do for me to keep my magic. That’s all.”
Stefan’s flinch was almost minute enough that I missed it, but otherwise he was almost unnaturally still.
“You’ll have it, all of it,” he said. “To the letter. You have my word. I have one request for you in return, even though I know I don’t have the right to ask you for anything.”
“You have the right to command me, if you choose to assert it,” I whispered. I almost wished he would. If he could only return to the callous, uncaring bastard he’d been on our wedding day, then I wouldn’t have wished, pitifully, for anything else.
“Never,” he spat, his face twisting into something like disgust. “I don’t blame you for thinking—never. No. I’m asking. Please call off His Eminence. Tell him not to gossip. That you mean to try to make a go of your marriage after all. That I’mbeing an indulgent husband. Whatever he wants to hear. Make a donation to the Temple of Ennolu in our names to smooth it over.”
“Bribe His Eminence?” I gasped. “Surely not!”
Stefan let out another bitter little laugh. “That’s what shocks you? You really are—if you want to be a Nevaian courtier, then unfortunately, that’s the way things are done here. You used His Eminence for your own ends. Now you pay for it. Like I’m doing now. Paying for my actions. At least the price you’re paying him is only money. If you will.”
Only money. Which I now had an endless supply of, at least by my lifelong standards. What price was Stefan suggesting he’d be paying? His self-respect? Well, that made two of us. He deserved it. The sickness in the pit of my stomach twisted tight. I nodded, all I could manage.
“Thank you. You’re generous.” His lips quirked. “And I don’t mean with money.” He moved at last, turning toward the door, his motions slow and heavy. He put his hand on the doorknob, staring down at it as he said, “You’ll summon me when you require my—services? And otherwise, funds will be available to you. And the carriage. And anything else you need, including my escort when appropriate. I’ll see my father right away, and I’ll make it clear that he’s not to come anywhere near you, and that any further meddling will result in consequences he won’t like. Is there, fuck, Remi. Is there anything else? Anything at all?”
I hadn’t imagined the note of hope in his voice, had I? It resonated in my chest like the chime of a temple bell. But the few feet of floor between us felt like a yawning, widening chasm, impossible to ever cross again, a perfect representation of our marriage. How would he touch me after this? I ought to take my potion after all. If I even could.
“No,” I whispered. Another lie. Another piece of me chipping away.
“Then good night.” Stefan stood there, perfectly still, for long enough that I thought he meant to say something else after all. My heart thumped in a wild rhythm, knocking into my ribs. I hated him. He’d tricked me and used me and fucked me and made me almost believe in his sincerity. And if he apologized again, if he apologizedandtouched me, I might hate him, but…if he only would, even though I didn’t want it, rather than leaving me standing here more alone than I’d ever been…
Stefan sighed, turned the knob, and left without another word or even a look.
I sank into the sofa, leaning down onto my knees and burying my face in my arms, sucking in frantic breaths that didn’t go anywhere near the bottom of my lungs. The tears I’d been keeping down finally welled up, dripping out to soak my sleeves and mark the fabric. It didn’t matter. Now I could buy as many silk coats as I wanted. A sob tore out of my throat, almost a laugh if it hadn’t hurt so much.
Finally, I’d been a part of a negotiation about my future rather than an object to be moved about at the whims of others, a thing to be used. It should’ve been immensely satisfying to take control of my own destiny, even in a small way. To have outwitted Stefan and his father. To have learned the truth rather than being fed lie after lie.
Instead, I felt nothing but an emptiness that the fine clothing, fine wine, and society of the capital, the meaningless fillips that I’d bargained for, could never fill.
Chapter Nineteen
If I’d known that night would be the last time, for two endless months, that I’d see the real Stefan—not the drawling, foppish dilettante he posed as, but his true self—I might have run after him and begged him to make me accept his apology after all.
