Page 28 of Not Another Happily Ever After

I stumble back, unable to carry the heavy feeling settling in my chest. The weight of knowing my questions for him will go forever unanswered makes me dizzy.

I wait for the bright blue thorns to cut into my back, hoping the pain will be greater than the overwhelming sorrow mounting beneath my ribs. But as I slip into the darkness for the second time today, it isn’t the branches welcoming my fall. It’s a powerful pair of arms.

Chapter

10

He put her in his bed.

He. Put. Her. In. His. Bed.

The potent smell of mint rips me from sleep.

I’m lying in a room that doesn’t belong to me. Above me is a low-beamed ceiling, fitted with cobwebs. To my left, obscure shadows cast by a small chamber stick dance across a faded brick wall. But that isn’t what sends my pulse racing.

At the center of the dimly lit room stands my future husband. Rigid. Imposing. Entirely unaware that I’ve awoken as he stares down his nose at something in the corner.

No. Not something.

Someone.

The ache in my arms sharpens as I shift, but I ignore it. I need to see who stands at the foot of the bed.Or rather, whose presence stirs that of the realm’s most petulant prince.

I’m expecting to find Xander or Rhidland. Preparing myself for the ensuing banter that is all but promised in their company. But only silence greets me. Silence, and the fleeting gaze of autumn green eyes.

My cheeks heat, dappled with a new kind of panic. The masked knight looks so at home in the darkened corner that one might overlook him entirely. I, however, can’t help but to look.

Frog takes a single step forward and my lungs seize. I hadn’t realized just how much the stormy night had hidden. The masked knight is well and truly a cause for curiosity. Even larger in the daylight lanterns, he stands. His limbs, long and rippling with lean muscle, tighten beneath my stare, as if he’s waiting for my permission to breathe.

Or maybe it’s the fear seizing his lungs, too?

The stinging memory of his words twists something inside of me and I tear my gaze away. But not before catching how Frog’s brows dip, his head tilting ever so slightly in my direction.Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t?—

I look. Frog’s eyes are still trained on me. But it isn’t fear I see in them. It’s…remorse?

Thoren follows the knight’s gaze, his eyes bouncing between us. I dip my chin, silently praying the heat flooding my cheeks fades before they give the prince the wrong idea.

Too late.

Thoren lunges at the knight, his lip curled into a wicked snarl.

“Stop!” I shriek, lurching upright from the bed.

The prince growls in reply as he attempts to shove his finger into the chest of Father’s most lethal hand. Only to meet the cool metal of the knight’s blade, fixed as a shield between them.I could have never expected something like this would be an arousing thing to witness.

“Did you not hear me,blade?”

I suck in a sharp breath, taken aback by the prince’s brazen use of the outdated slur. But while my face contorts into outrage for the knight, he couldn’t appear less bothered. It’s his lack of reaction that has the prince blowing hot air out of his nose like some kind of deranged animal.

“Leave. Now,” he barks.

“I heard you well enough the first time.” The dark knight straightens, but his posture is free of unrest, his body as steady as the words that slip past his masked lips. “Your voice, no matter the volume in which you use it, carries the same amount of power. Which is to say, very little.”

Three small lines bracketing either side of the knight’s gaze accentuate the subtle lilt in his tone. If I had to wager, I’d say there’s a pretty good chance he’s smiling behind that mask of his.

“This is not your kingdom. And I am not your blade.”

The mussed-up sheets clutched tightly to my chest fall to the wayside, taking the lower half of my jaw. I stare, utterly titillated by the knight’s apparent way with words.